Twitter Discovery Engine… Awesome!
Twitter has started rolling out the Discovery Search Engine, a small test group of accounts now have Twitter search fully integrated to the home page.
As one of the accounts to already have this feature, I wanted to show you what the fuss is all about.
The first difference I noticed was the position of the search box which has moved from the top of the page, to a more natural position in the side bar.
The real improvement is the way your search results are returned. No longer are you taken to a new page. Instead, when you do a search, the relevant tweets instantly show up right where they should be, on your home page.
I think this change really improves both the functionality and feel of using Twitter search to find any tweets that contain the word or phrase you’re interested.
Another feature added is the ability to save a search for a term or interest that you want to follow . Saved search terms are placed permanently in your sidebar for easy access. So if you want to know what people are saying about the weeks football games, a product you sell, or just about anything else, it becomes a link on your home page.
And there’s more…
Also now appearing in the home page sidebar are Twitter trends. The top ten words and phrases being mentioned on Twitter make up the currently trending Twitter topics. This is a great place to start if you are looking forinfomation or a discussion on a current event or topic. Clicking on a trend will bring up the latest tweets that include the trending term.
Introducing the improved search features will surely encourage new tweeps to remain inside Twitter as oppose to using third party search app’s. However, I do not see a huge number of tweeps that make use of desktop and browser Twitter clients with built in search switching over. This said, I do think Twitter has got the search integration spot on.
Well done Twitter!
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