Finally I get to talk about it.
Congratulations both to my old friends at Summize and my new friends at Twitter for a great deal. It makes sense both from a mile away and close up.
From far away, Twitter gets to add a new dimension to its seminal utility. Search is such a natural complement to the core communication capabilities – a capability that takes the magic spark in real-time public communication and allows users to explore and extend that spark over time. The implications of this are big. At the core Twitter now has something to drive additional user engagement as well as tap into a different type of user. In early communities they were known as lurkers. Following the trend, now maybe they’re “twurkers” but the idea is simple: in many cases contributors are outnumbered by watchers by 10 to 1. To be clear, that’s one person who tweets and around ten people who read them. They search, read and explore the corpus of the Twittersphere to stay on top of politics, movies and people they are interested in. It’s already happening. (Shout out to my dad!) Sounds like a foundation for a business model to me and a way to make Twitter accessible to the market at large, not just early adopters.
It’s also a fascinating new resource – a fundamentally new corpus. Traditional search is about finding answers from within PUBLISHED information, from within documents and databases. A huge amount of our daily lives are not captured in published info. Those who Twitter are commenting and interacting. It’s EXPRESSED information…. From mundane comments about the weather to an emotionally charged spouting of a layoff or arrest. From general comments about migraine medication to hyper-local information about the Shake Shack line. It’s a new type of information that has not previously existed and it’s extremely valuable and useful. Think local, think shopping, think about linking online social networks to offline ones.
There’s a big future here in conversational search.
From close up, it’s a great deal as well. Having worked with Abdur and Greg for the better part of the last seven years, I know them pretty well. Add in the other great Summizers and Twitter is getting a hell of a team. Put that with the energy and vision of Jack, Ev, Biz and the team, throw in a healthy dose of tangible chemistry, and this is a great match. I expect great things to come from this.
I’m pulling for a rapid integration, getting through the hard parts and on to the fun stuff.
May the Force be with Jay too, as he picks his next focus.
So, again, congratulations to everyone and I look forward to finding ways to work together for the next 7 years.
(Posted by email via flickr)
Illustration and design by Kurt Aspland
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July 16, 2008 at 6:06 am
[...] More on the Twitter blog and on the blog of former AOL Search head Gerry Campbell. [...]