Twitter and Facebook, two of the web’s top social networks, are aiming to be the number one player in real-time search.<\/p>\n
About a year ago, Twitter acquired real-time search engine Summize, a search engine that indexes tweets. Shortly after the Summize acquisition Twitter rolled out Twitter Search and the era of real-time search started.<\/p>\n
Since then, the area of real-time search has taken off. Twitter Search and Twitter’s trending topics have become a mainstay of Twitter’s microblogging platform and has also become one of the top searches for monitoring breaking and current news stories.<\/p>\n
For a year, Twitter had no big rivals in the real-time search arenea. However, that all changed overnight when Facebook took over FriendFeed and rolled out their real-time search engine last week. Facebook’s real-time search can search status updates on user profiles; track pictures, personal notes, online videos etc.<\/p>\n
Will Facebook’s acquisition moves and larger membership numbers and make Twitter’s real-time search irrelevant or will Twitter find a way to trump Facebook’s moves into the Twitter territory?<\/p>\n
Twitter’s real-time search has only been in use for a year. However, it is positioned as the current leader in real-time search. When you want to find out what people are saying about current news stories you go to Twitter.<\/p>\n
According to Mashable.com, Twitter has 3 main advantages over Facebook:<\/p>\n
1] First mover advantage.<\/p>\n
2] More experience with real-time search.<\/p>\n
3] An open platform.<\/p>\n
Even though Facebook’s real-time search is only a week old, their new real-time search can search a lot more than just status updates. Facebook’s real-time search has access to over 250 million users, the world\u2019s largest social network can search photos, popular links, current events, applications and more.<\/p>\n
Mashable.com notes some advantages that Facebook’s search has over Twitter search:<\/p>\n
1] More users.<\/p>\n
2] A more diverse search tool.<\/p>\n
3] Talent and real-time search technology acquired from FriendFeed.<\/p>\n
Either social network could win the real-time search race or Google could launch a powerful real-time search engine and wipe out both Facebook and Twitter from the real-time search market.<\/p>\n