Hardly a week goes by that we don’t see a story about how Twitter is, or isn’t, on the brink of making billions of dollars for its developers. So far, despite its tremendous popularity, nobody has figured out how to turn it into a money machine. But Twitter has something like 60 million people signed up and Tweeting, and the internet biggies like Microsoft and Google are trying to come up with a plan to tap into that potential market. It seems to be that using their search engines is the way to go.
Yahoo! thinks they have cracked the nut and are starting to utilize Twitter on their search engine, supposedly starting this past Thursday. The Associated Press explains:
Yahoo is relying on Twitter to highlight the latest news about specific subjects. When a user enters a search request tied to breaking news, Yahoo will top the results page with four tabs — one for direct links to news sites, one for photos, one for video and one dedicated to Twitter.
Clicking on a Twitter tab will show news links posted by Twitter users. Some of the links will be drawn from Twitter accounts set up by the news media, such as CNN and The Associated Press, while others will be pulled from people pointing out a story they find interesting.
Google’s search page has “tabs” at the top also, namely Images, Video, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail, and More. No Twitter (or Facebook). I clicked on the “More” tab, but still no Twitter. I went to the Yahoo! search engine and entered “Miley Cyrus,” certainly a “breaking news” topic with that fatal tour bus accident yesterday, but there aren’t any Twitter tabs or even any links in the results yet. Anyway, they’ve got an interesting concept and has some good potential with this growing trend of the Citizen Journalist to get photos and information uploaded to Twitter as the news is actually happening.
But it seems to me like the technological advances these days are popping up so fast that innovations like this are left behind within weeks and it’s on to the next Great Digital Adventure.
Well, let’s get a great equipment adventure started and get the morning check list started. I need to get some more coffee going, too.
Also on FireGeezer…
- Morning Lineup – March 6 – March 6, 2011
- Morning Lineup – May 26 – May 26, 2011
- Morning Lineup – August 14 – August 14, 2011
- Morning Lineup – January 4 – January 4, 2011
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