Twitter has added a two new search capabilities, with spelling correct and enhanced people finding tools.
The micro-blogging platform has introduced search auto–complete and “people you follow” features and results for people’s real names as well as their user names.
Search autocomplete attempts to predict completed search terms as the user types, a convenience that can make searching much quicker.
This function has been available for a while on Google, but time will tell how Twitter users will react to the new feature and if they feel like it’s helpful or an annoyance instead.
According to blog post announcing the new features, Twitter engineer Frost Li said: “This is especially useful if you’re trying to follow the hashtag for an event or you’re looking for a certain Twitter account.”
For instance, if you’re doing a search for basketball player Jeremy Lin, you can enter either his name or “@jlin7” account name and a list of results will pop up giving you an option to select what you are looking for.
Also, if you spell something wrong, Twitter will now automatically show results for the right spelling.
Twitter’s autocomplete displays suggested terms or phrases in a dropdown menu, along with Twitter account names that match.
“Viewing tweets about a topic from just the people you follow is a great way to find useful information and join the conversation,” Li said.
Twitter claims to have more than 140 million active users who post more than one billion tweets every three days, with the largest number being in the US.
Currently, one billion unique Google searches are performed daily, with Google being the website with the most traffic in the world. Facebook is second and Twitter stands at ninth.
There is one area in particular where Twitter could challenge Google — paid advertising and, in particular, mobile advertising where Facebook has struggled.
Discovery and search are two crucial aspects of the service, which has seen its popularity grow tremendously in recent times. The service is used by all manner of Internet users, but is yet to really hit upon the right approach to provide a fully engaging and personal discovery experience.
Twitter’s last significant focus on discovery saw it introduce the ‘Discovery’ tab late last year, in a move aimed at helping to find and better curate content on the service, in a Flipboard-like fashion.
Last month, Twitter made a series of subtle but interesting changes, which included increased support for multimedia content in its integration with Facebook, and it sped-up the loading time by up to five times.
The autocomplete and spell correction features will be rolled out for Twitter’s mobile apps as well as on its website.
Read the official Twitter bog here
