For some reason, the “Twitter is a Google killer” hyperbole has sprung up again in the last week or so. And this time, there are some important thought leaders like John Battelle chiming in. Here’s what he wrote in a post called “Twitter = YouTube”:
So why did Google really buy YouTube? My answer, which of course looks brilliant given it’s 20/20 hindsight: YouTube was a massive search asset. Fast forward to today. What’s the most important and quickly growing form of search on the web today? Real time, conversational search. And who’s the YouTube of real time search? Yep. Twitter.
I’ve been writing about Twitter Search since the early days of Summize – I’ve always loved it. It’s no surprise to me that others are finally starting to see the value in it. Here’s what I wrote in October, for instance:
Lots of people already contribute to the noise on Twitter, and I think their user base will only continue to grow. So they’ve got that covered. Increasingly it seems that Twitter is working to extract value from that noise. That’s the area they need to focus on most.
The improvements to Twitter Search have been minimal – the addition of the “source” parameter to results, and testing integrated search on the main website. I’d love to see some additional improvements to the service.
Others who have discussed the “Twitter threat to Google” idea include: San Jose Mercury News, Fimoculous, Search Engine Journal, and The Blog Herald. AllFacebook looks at it from another angle.
What should you take away from this? Essentially, that Twitter Search is becoming increasingly important. If you’re not already using it, start now. And don’t expect Google and others to ignore it forever.
MasterMaq's Blog 
Twitter Search is awesome, but it’s certainly not a Google Killer. I definitely agree that Google is taking note though, and they will build their own twitter search or acquire TwitterSearch soon. There was an interesting article on the impact of micro-blogging on SeoMoz a couple of days ago:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/nofollow-is-dying-the-impact-of-microblogging-and-nofollow-on-seo
I’ve just been in Silicon Valley to meet Robert Scoble. I recoded his talk on the real time web mostly focusing on twitter. The talk ties in nicely with the post above… http://blog.smibs.com/posts/1180/robert-scoble-talks-at-mountain-view-meetup/
Thanks both for the links!