There was an article today on how Dell was able to juice there sales by USD 3 million thanks to Twitter. My god! I almost think Twitter will solve world hunger and deliver peace in the Middle East. So why all the rage around Twitter? In my opinion it’s the next evolution of search – social search to be more exact.
Today, if you want information on traveling to Aruba you would most likely goto Google and put in some search terms and boom a million pages to go through…oh what fun. In geek terms that is a pull search, you are pulling the information.
Several months ago I let me friends know on Facebook I was looking to travel to Dubai. I got back a bunch of tips and pointers which were helpful but I ended up falling back to a Google search. The next version of search will push the results to you. How convenient would it be if you got several ideas delivered to your email about your upcoming trip to Aruba, such as places to stay, places to eat and things to do. Then you could aggregate the data with what your friends might have recommended.
Another example, let’s say its time to upgrade your grocery getter and you let people know you are in the market for a “4 door sedan around USD 40k.” You’ll most likely get 3-4 comments from friends and then maybe a service like Edmund’s or Cars.com can email you the specific information. That would be a hugh time saver and then if you needed more info you could always go back to Google and refine your search criteria. This of course assumes these services won’t spam the hell out of you, and that is a big assumption.
The real question is whether Twitter is a part of the overall long term social search solution or just a temporary blip.
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