Google Sees Twitter Gain Traction

Not long ago, very few users knew about Twitter, let alone, Microblogging. These days, many face-to-face conversations and online conversations revolve around Twitter. Businesses and organizations are all gravitating towards Twitter, updating various times a day. So it comes to no surprise that as Twitter gains traction, other resources lose attention. Who would have believed that the source losing its audience would be search engine giant Google?

According to recent reports, “Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, admitted today that the company has been losing out to Twitter in the race to meet web user’s demand for real-time information”. Twitter recently added a search function directly on the website that lets users track conversations happening in real-time.  And while Twitter’s advantage is its timeliness, Google prides itself in its accuracy. Although there has been speculation that Google would buy Twitter, that might not be happening any time soon.  As Google states, “because of the way that Twitter is built, which allows any developer to take its stream of real-time messages, or tweets, and build applications around them, Google does not need to buy the business to get involved in the indexing of real-time information generated by Twitterers”.  Even though Google might not be up to par with real-time search functions, they can still find a way to benefit from Twitter. How might Twitter affect Google’s practices in the future?