Facebook vs Twitter – The Real Time Search War

A week or so ago Twitter unveiled its latest attempt to transform itself into a viable (aka profitable) business. Naturally, Twitter’s monetisation strategy is built upon advertising. Its latest product has been dubbed ‘Promoted Trends‘, which as the name suggests enables companies to buy their way into Twitter’s trending topics. It follows hot on the heels of Twitter’s ‘Promoted Tweets‘ product, which affords advertisers premium position for branded messages in Twitter’s real time search engine. While neither product seems like an instant silver bullet to me, one thing is clear… Twitter believes that the solution to its cash flow problems lie in real time search.

Why search is smart

Twitter’s decision to pursue profits via real time search is smart for a couple of reasons:

1. Google has proven that contextually relevant search advertising is a booming business model, although whether it translates across to real-time search is questionable
2. Confining advertising products (promoted trends/tweets) within the search engine ensures that users’ Twitter streams aren’t polluted with unwanted advertising. Long time readers will know my strong feelings on the topic (which I labelled Twitter whoring)!

Much respect must go to Twitter for maintaining user experience as a primary goal when building their business model. It’s a philosophy Facebook could learn from, particularly in light of their recent clumsy attempts to build their own real time search product.

Facebook’s Privacy Saga

Like Twitter, Facebook clearly see real-time search as critical to their future. And with over 500 million users, no-one is in a better position to report on the pulse of the planet in real-time. Yet Facebook can’t analyse and aggregate its mountains of data, as most users lock their data (status updates, links etc) behind privacy settings. So while Facebook undoubtedly has the best grasp on what the world is talking about, they can’t aggregate or report on (most of) it.

Facebook is clearly frustrated by this. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg went as far to claim that “the age of privacy is over“. And in the last few months Facebook actively attempted to rectify this situation by introducing new privacy settings that pushed people towards open profiles.

Many argued they did so deceptively, and I tend to agree after discovering a number of friends maintaining inadvertently open profiles against their will (and knowledge). It’s clear the move to get users to open their profiles was designed for Facebook’s benefit, rather than the users. Thus the Facebook revolt began. The irony of the whole situation is that privacy controls are precisely what put Facebook where it is today.

But will real time search ever be profitable?

That is the question. I personally don’t doubt there are mountains of profits to be made via real time search. Advertisers will always chase ad space when people search for brand names, products and relevant keywords. So Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends make perfect sense as advertising products.

The problem however is that normal people don’t use Twitter, let alone Twitter’s search engine. Few would even understand the benefits of real time search. It simply isn’t mainstream. Which is what Twitter needs to happen for it to attract real advertising dollars.

So how can Twitter take real time search to the mainstream? Here are my thoughts:

• There’s one sure fire way to take real time search to the masses, and that’s via Google. Google definitely want (and need) to integrate real time information into its search results, as it is a clear weakness. Real time data is returned in Google’s ‘Updates’ search filter, but it isn’t sorted or ranked in any meaningful manner.
• Rather than compete with Google, a battle they’re likely to lose, Twitter should be aiming to partner with Google. Twitter has the real time data, and Google has access to the masses and a proven advertising platform. Furthermore, Twitter is far less of a strategic threat than Facebook, so a partnership that may in fact weaken Facebook’s real time search ambitions is feasible.
• For the partnership to be struck, Twitter needs to bring some major cards to the table. Google won’t jump into bed without reason. Access to its data alone isn’t enough. Google already has that. What they don’t have is a way to rank that real time data, such as PageRank for standard web search. Real time data is simply displayed chronologically, which fails to sort the wheat from the chaff. Indeed, the quality of Google’s real time search is very un-Google like. It’s more reminiscent of Alta-vista…
• With a head start in aggregating and analysing real time data (aka trending topics), Twitter’s best opportunity is to develop the most advanced real time search product on the web. Google has proven that being the best at filtering data is a business model in itself. Twitter must nail real time search before anyone else, and should have a head start on the field. The good news is Twitter seems to be thinking the same thing.
• Finally, with a superior real time search product, Twitter should aim to strike a partnership with Google to make it available via their search engine. Advertising revenue generated via Google’s advertising in real time search results could then be split between the parties.

Of course, this is a gross simplification of the situation. Indeed, Google may seek to tackle real time search on its own. But Google has shown in the past that they’re not shy in acquiring businesses with a specific technical capability. And if not, there’s always another fairly large search that’s constantly looking for news ways to differentiate itself from Google…