twitter explained

i felt like it was the end of my ability to grasp technology as i've watched dumbfounded by twitter's staggering growth. but after talking to a number of people about twitter, i think i at least have a clue. so for those that already know and love twitter, move on. for those that can't explain why tweets are taking over the world, read on.

Twitter, quite simply, is a real time set of information for anything. want to know why caesar crossed the rubicon, check out wikipedia. but if you want to know whether 1oak is having a good night, go to search.twitter.com and search for 1oak.

current events like swine flu for example can be scooped by searching twitter. latest restaurant reviews are best viewed by searching twitter.

facebook has really blown their status updates by not making it searchable. presumably because of privacy controls, fb has not made status updates searchable, but it's kind of pathetic that you can't search among your friends for updates which include specific words.

i have often asked the question, why would anyone twitter at all. the best answer i can come up with is because you can. all of a sudden with a few seconds of your time, you can reach out to all your followers and get a point across. further, with their ability to re-tweet what you've written, your idea can reach thousands or even millions of people within a few minutes. that's very powerful! nothing else available today can facilitate that.

if facebook doesn't get their act together, twitter could end of being the social network of choice for the world. when you're up over 500 friends on facebook, what does it matter if your comments are open for the whole world (i don't consider myself to be particularly friendly and i have over 400 friends on FB)?

Facebook takes down Google

Right now, Google has a market cap of about $100 billion which is severely depressed from its all time high of nearly $180 billion. That's quite a tumble, but not nearly as big of a tumble as Facebook has taken. Facebook went from a valuation of $15 billion in Oct 2007 to about $2 to $2.5 billion on secondary markets like SecondMarket.

Facebook is going to absolutely dominate the future of the internet. Social networking is more popular than email and growing at an astounding clip.

Search will continue to keep the top ranking. But it's not hard to imagine a time when Facebook launches its own search engine. I have no doubt in my mind that in the next 6-24 months, Facebook will launch it's own search.

Search is all about brand. I know people like to claim that Google search results are better than Yahoo's and that's why they've dominated, but it's simply not true. In 2007, Yahoo overtook Google as the top rated search engine, even as their market share declined.

Facebook, when they launch their search engine, (and again, it is inconceivable that they will not) will know who all your friends are and what their search queries and clicks have been. With that data, even a terrible programming team could make the results slightly better than existing search engines. And Facebook seems to have great programmers. So shortly after they launch, Google will see itself facing a competitor who has better search results and a better brand. That is a one, two punch that will clobber Google.

Facebook will take market share from Google search. I think there is a very real chance that Facebook search eventually eclipses Google search in the next 5 to 10 years.

I know the dig on Facebook has been that it doesn't have a revenue model. But, check out this article from 2002.

Google's toughest search is for a business model

Facebook will find a revenue model and Google market share will be pared. So, if you can scoop up Facebook shares at $2 billion, it's a steal.