Is Twitter taking away business from Google?
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Musa
4 years ago -
737
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I recently pushed myself to start using Twitter to see what all the fuss is about. Stephen Fry even spoke about using it when he was on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross; I didn’t realise what a tech head Stephen Fry actually is. He (as of this minute) has 150,816 Tweeple following him on Twitter!
So, what has it done for me? I am actually enjoying it! I have been following other industry peers, picking up the latest news, asking questions, communicating news with my followers (I will Tweet this blog post to broadcast it to a new audience) and I have surprised myself at how useful it has been. I have just started to use TweetDeck which will help to organise everything and on the first day of using it I think it will seriously help.
Anyway, to the point of my blog post. It has just struck me that I have started to use Twitter for search. I am in the process of choosing a new Net Book (micro laptop) and instead of heading straight to Google I unconsciously opted to use Twitter instead; asking my fellow human peers for their advice! And, it has worked – I am getting real opinions from people that have helped me in my buying decision. AND it’s not just me – just today I have seen people asking for advice about what hotel rooms to book, cheap idea for valentines day, some else asking what phone to buy…
There is a real value to being able to broadcast a question to a trusted community of people. There is a value behind getting an real human answer opposed to receiving automated suggestions from a search engine.
It has helped in my early stages of purchasing. I have been given recommendations to products to consider – the next stage of course is to go onto Google and find out where to buy it from for the best price! :)
I am also getting some of my news updates from Twitter. This week everyone was Twittering about the snow – I got an idea about the people who weren’t effected by the snow and I could see who those lucky people were who couldn’t get into work! Stephen Fry has just told me that we lost the cricket and I can see that England won the rugby.
So, how powerful is this application becoming? I am finding more uses for Twitter the more I am using it. It is assisting me with the way in which I use ‘search’. Of course it isn’t going to take away my dependence on Google but I can see that Twitter will help me in the future. It is more than a ‘status update’ application – there is a strong community growing of Tweeple who want another way to communicate. So at the moment I am embracing it and I am sure I will find more uses for Twitter as time goes on. I do love this industry – what is going to be the next internet revolution?!
You can follow me on Twitter on this link: http://twitter.com/freshegg
They both have their uses like you said asking a question and getting an answer from a group of similar minded people is a big plus of twitter. Even after having someone’s advise I always seem to Google a product and find reviews just to give myself that final bit of confidence that Im making the right purchase, so I think the 2 can go hand in hand. Twitter is having its moment and at some point in the near future there will be a next big thing, but I think Google will still be the number one search engine for a while to come.
The potential for businesses is vast. I have read numerous articles of late from local coffee shops using Twitter to take drink orders from customers, through to airlines promoting lead-in fares and posting updates on flying programs.
It will be a huge shame if Twitter decides to monetize the site by charging brands to create account profiles. Less so BA, more so ‘local coffee shop’.
Perhaps future Twitter accounts will involved the tracking of booking enquiries or conversions to a profiles’ commercial site and earn a % commission via leads?
Whatever, it will be a shame for Twitter’s potential to not be fully realised by the small business before they have to lose out once again to the big players with deep pockets.