John Dennis

Most people could agree that given first thought, Twitter going up against Google would be like a small child wrestling against a sumo wrestler. While I’ll be the first to admit that I quickly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (I believe it was with 2007’s 30 Day Challenge - thanks Ed Dale), I will say that it took me a little while to realize its true potential power. At first glance, Twitter is just another social networking tool. A way to keep in contact with friends and colleagues. But if you really take a moment to understand and appreciate the things Twitter brings into light, you’ll realize that even aside from internet marketing, Twitter brings some very cool tools and ways to connect with people and our entire world. And as we all know, so does Google — on a grand scale.

One thing’s for certain, Google has a massive stake in the internet and the way we leverage the web to make money. I couldn’t even possibly begin to explain all of the tools, resources and advantages that Google has made available to us. Google has affected the way everyone uses the internet and so far, it’s been in a good way (aside from the G-slap). If you really start to look at both Twitter and Google, you’ll notice some pretty stark similarities.

A very apparent similarity between both Google and Twitter that I believe can be attributed to their success is they both sold simple. When Google was released, Yahoo was on top of the search engine wars but their page was literally inundated with just… a mess. Google provided a clean, easy to use simple way to search online and has since made searching online popular. Twitter, on the other hand, came along and took micro-blogging by storm, and is growing at an exponential rate because they introduced a simple, organized way of keeping in contact with friends and colleagues and has since made micro-blogging popular.

So then, what’s with all this talk about #Twitter #Search being better than Google? Here’s my take on it: Because of the huge number of people communicating through Twitter daily, hourly and even by the minute - it has allowed anyone to search anything that might be going on in the world right now or in the last 12 hours. It is a better way of keeping tabs on what’s going on around the globe than Google because there’s no waiting ’til tomorrow to find out. When President Obama went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last Thurday, I found out and was able to watch it because I did a Twitter search for Obama and saw that someone had just posted about the show running. I didn’t have to wait until the next day when someone uploaded it to Youtube. Want to know about anything that just happened with virtually anything that exists? Twitter search it. If not used for social networking, it is used as a real-time search engine - and Google cannot duplicate that.

There will be a new mainstream way of networking, social contact, searching, promoting and possibly even more. Is Twitter better than Google? Only in some ways. Google will obviously keep hold of its powerful stake in the internet, and will probably move towards ways to embrace Twitter. One thing’s for certain: the power of Twitter has yet to be fully embraced by many companies and many people, and therefore can only keep growing. I think in the end, Twitter’s longevity in stability is secure because of it’s search capabilities and the users who contribute to it in real-time. Regardless, it sure will be exciting to see which directions Twitter moves toward.

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth…
… while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world…
… that no longer exists.”
- Eric Hoffer

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