First, a bunch of links about the famous physicist. Right now, half way down the first page, you'll find some news results with the story; they weren't there when I first tried the query. So I tried the same query on Twitter search.
In a matter of seconds, I was able to confirm that this news is, indeed, true. I was also able to find links to a bunch of news sites with this breaking news, before it showed up on their RSS feeds. I was able to read conversations, from real people, which pointed out various details about the story. I've set up a TwitZap channel so I can follow the story in real time.
The difference is even more astounding when we're talking about an event that isn't going to get covered by major news outlets, like a local charity marathon; or some major event - an earthquake, perhaps - that'll get tweeted perhaps hours before it reaches the media.
Yes, we all know that Twitter is great for tracking conversations. There's been a lot of talk that its biggest strength is precisely its search. But sometimes it's hard to fathom just how important this is.
Google is the biggest entity on the Internet. It is synonymous with "search". It feels like it's been around forever.
It is also not able to compete with Twitter.
I'm not talking about being a little bit worse than Twitter. I'm saying that when it comes to current events, Google is nowhere near Twitter's speed and scope. It's not even in the same league. If Stephen Hawking gets better - which I sincerely hope will happen - I'll find out about it first on Twitter. In comparison, searching for it on Google would be like looking at yesterday's newspapers.
Of course, in the past, Google has shown to be quite resilient to competition. They've adapted quickly, their search engine was always one step ahead of the rest. This time, I'm not so sure. They've had two different services similar to Twitter to play with - Dodgeball and Jaiku - and they've done very little with them. Twitter, on the other hand, is growing very, very fast. Maybe it already reached the critical mass it needs to become the ultimate conversation search engine; maybe this time is just around the corner.
My home page in Firefox has been Google for as long as I can remember. I never thought I'd think about changing it. I'm thinking about it now.
More Twitter Resources From Mashable
- FOLLOW FAIL: The top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter