Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster.
Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article.
Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story. On search.Twitter.com, you get the whole thing at once.
Obviously, this is a poor example. It was a magnitude 3.1, so no one felt it, and it was 100 miles north of San Francisco.
The last one anybody felt was on Feb 21st at 11:01 AM, and the first (non-automated) tweet was at 11:21 AM (http://twitter.com/indiaknight/statuses/1234962301). This example is similarly bad, since it didn't really affect anyone in a big way. However, for instant reactions to notable events, Twitter can't be beat. If today's earthquake had been "the big one," you can bet twitter would have been flooded with information, missing people reports, locations for aid, firsthand accounts and so on.
Yes. I was at my desk a few weeks ago and felt something. Couldn't tell if it was my neighbor or a quake, so I searched twitter. Got the answer instantly.
I also got stuck in crazy traffic on the 405 recently. I searched twitter and learned which side streets to take. Google's map program doesn't seem to cover side streets.
It doesn't replace Google for me, but it does replace it for certain searches.
I don't know about an earthquake, never felt one, but in all honesty I would rather read an article the 140 characters would be a tease as much specifics couldn't be given.
If you think about it twitter would be good for traffic or something like that, but only if a radio station or some larger element was relaying the message.
The same goes for a natural disaster, I'm not going to go look and see about a tornado or something along those lines on twitter, but a news company could relay it to me and this is about the biggest use I see of twitter search.
In all honesty if I was searching for a subject it would be because I am aware of it and want to learn more, be it a disaster, story, or subject; twitter to me is exactly what it claims to be a way to update your status quickly and as much as you want.
Thing is though, you aren't viewing 140 characters at a time. You're viewing a page of 20 of the most recent 140-character posts from a variety of people (all with differing perspectives) at the same time. It's not better or worse than a news outlet, it's just different.
The timeliness of Twitter is definitely amazing. I think a lot of things will break via Twitter, and IIRC the emergency landing in the Hudson was one of these stories. It's the undisputed champ of quickly getting information "out there" ... provided you matter to enough people for it to begin to spread virally.
It's definitely cool to see people's take on ultra-current events, and Twitter search can provide the Who, What, Where, When, and Why, but does not dig very deep into any of them. And because of the vast amounts of noise, it also requires you to know beforehand what you're looking for.
What Twitter search is amazing at is eyewitness accounts in realtime for things you're actively seeking... but to me eyewitness accounts are only one aspect of the story, and usually I'm not seeking anything in particular. News has its place, and Twitter has its place, I don't see them intersecting over any other aspect than eyewitness accounts.
Next time you have a problem with your machine or with some code you're writing try your search on Google and on Twitter Search. Next time you want to buy something try Google and Twitter. Next time you want to look up the population of Tanzania try Google and Twitter.
Twitter provides "real-time search," but that is just a small, almost miniscule subset of Google's capabilities. You can in some cases get real-time data from social aggregators and Facebook; I think those are the real competitors to Twitter.
Twitter is not even in the same league as Google. They don't cover the same areas, they don't have the same business models, they don't have comparable numbers of users, they don't offer the same services. There is absolutely no competition here.
Earthquakes are a great example. If I feel an earthquake, I might visit a site like that to get the scientific facts about the epicenter and magnitude of the earthquake.
However, there is a totally different kind of value to Twitter posts: instead of data, I'm getting firsthand accounts of who felt it, where, what they were doing at the time, and what effect it had on their life. Yes, this information is (obviously) anecdotal, but its also interesting, informative and immediate.
That doesn't update every second of every minute of every day. Verifying immediately that you did in fact feel an earthquake is a perfect example of twitter's power. As a San Francisco resident I can tell you this definitively.
And since it's backed by actual scientific instruments, you can tell immediately if it was a magnitude 3 in Berkeley, or a magnitude 6 in Parkfield, which is better than some tweet of "I just felt an earthquake".
This is the standard counter-argument, and it is of course valid.
However this has got to be a tiny fraction of total searches and total utility derived from search.
Also, how often is there breaking news in your neighborhood that's worth following at that level? Even if it's pretty close, but not literally in your neighborhood, it seems you'd be just as good with cnn.com or something.
Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article.
Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story. On search.Twitter.com, you get the whole thing at once.