This article was published on July 6, 2012

Hands-on with Twitter’s new Simpler Search: Timeline search is a game changer


Hands-on with Twitter’s new Simpler Search: Timeline search is a game changer

Now that the cat is out of the bag, we know what Twitter meant when it said the company would be changing the way we explore and discover on the service forever.

I’m taking the new features for a spin, and I have to say that I’m mighty impressed. Have a look at the autocompletion:

That feature alone is worth the price of admission, but when you throw on the fact that you can now sort through tweets only from the people that you follow, aka “Timeline search”? It’s gangbusters:

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

It truly is a whole new world, and a whole new Twitter experience to be able to do this. Once again the service feels small when I want it to, or global and massive when I choose.

By being able to search for things like “dog” and narrowing it down to just the people I follow, I can in essence see what all of my friends are saying about their pets. It might sound goofy, but man, it’s powerful. The other neat thing? Your own tweets pop up in the search results:

Suggested results is a great way for Twitter to get users to dig deep into content, without them leaving the site or performing multiple searches:

The user experience for a company that has so much data is key, and very difficult to solve. I’m not saying that Twitter is perfect, but in a lot of people’s minds, this type of experience is what could make the service more long-tail than real-time. That’s huge.

Without a doubt, this is something that the company has been working on for some time. Features like this will go through many iterations in the future, but what we’re seeing is most certainly the core Twitter search experience for years to come.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with