Is it possible to think that within 3 years time the biggest most powerful players in search would be Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter?
I think that with the experience that News Corp has had with MySpace proves that you need a tangible relevant search product to create a powerful long-lasting Internet property. You can’t pay such a high premium for eyeballs. You still need an outlet that satisfies our basic need to know more information.
Is it possible to think that with recent deals with Google and Bing that Twitter has found a way to wrap value around their stream of information? Will Twitter be able to re-direct the steady flow of information into actionable revenue?
Even though Twitter and Facebook could essentially have a lot of the same real-time results I think Twitter is becoming a more trusted source. Twitter has gone through many different news cycles this year, starting with the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River. It will be interesting to see how the search engines return the actual results as they relate to real-time sources.
Facebook probably has the most potential to develop their own full blown search engine. Facebook has a very feature-rich user experience barely second to Google, and some would argue they might have the most well-rounded experience on the internet today. Facebook has to work through their growing pains with privacy issues and more but I think they’re goal is to harness real-time search into a something they can ride into Web 3.0 or whatever contains the next wave.
Search is here to stay, it’s only going to get bigger.
