Reading all the articles of how Twitter kept people updated during the Chinese earthquake/terror attacks/MJ’s death, you would think that there’s an easy way to keep track of popular topics on the micro-blogging services. There wasn’t. And if you wanted a topic in particular, searching for it was near-impossible. Until now…
Twitter has unveiled the new version of its homepage, and made it a lot more accessible for newcomers and non-Tweeters. The first thing that hits you is the big search box, which lets you “see what people are saying about” a topic.
Search is obviously a big deal for Twitter, as the eventual ad revenue from gathering user data can be tremendous for a company that expects to hit one billion users in a couple of years.
The introduction of this feature is bound to be welcomed by those who aren’t interested in Tweeting, but would still like to know what others are going on about. Let’s face it, the service is pretty amazing for timely updates when something big is happening.
Twitter has also sought to nudge visitors into the direction of hot topics by listing them in three sections: minute, day and week.
For Web-based users of the service, signing into your account is now done through a small drop-down menu in the top-right corner. The profile page after logging in remains unchanged.
The eagle-eyed writers at TechCrunch also found that Twitter is using this new homepage search interface to highlight some of the lesser-used search operators, like the “:)” symbol for results with “positive attitude”; and “until” to search for time-based results.
Source: TechCrunch