Google Offers Twitter Replay

Real-time search now goes back in time.

Thomas Claburn, Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

April 14, 2010

2 Min Read
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In its first major enhancement to its real-time search capabilities, which debuted last December, Google on Wednesday introduced the ability to replay past Twitter posts.

Relevant Twitter posts, or tweets, show up in Google search results in more or less real-time, and can be viewed specifically through the "Updates" link, accessed from the "Show Options" disclosure button, on the left-hand pane of Google's search results page.

Previously these "Updates" scrolled off the search results page as new ones were loaded.

But now Google is providing both a timeline chart that displays the volume of tweets on previous days and the ability to replay these past tweets.

"With the advent of blogs and micro-blogs, there's a constant online conversation about breaking news, people and places -- some famous and some local," explains Google product manager Dylan Casey in a blog post. "Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what's happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful."

Google says it plans to make tweet replays available in English globally over the next few days.

For those who can't want to test the new capability, the company has provided a link that allows users to experiment with the new service.

People seeking to plumb past tweets will also be able to turn to the Library of Congress, which said on Wednesday that it had acquired the entire archive of Twitter messages, dating back to March 2006.

"That's right," said Library of Congress director of communications Matt Raymond in a blog post. "Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter's inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That's a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions."

Stay tuned for the privacy backlash.

About the Author

Thomas Claburn

Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful master's degree in film production. He wrote the original treatment for 3DO's Killing Time, a short story that appeared in On Spec, and the screenplay for an independent film called The Hanged Man, which he would later direct. He's the author of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and a sadly neglected blog, Lot 49. His iPhone game, Blocfall, is available through the iTunes App Store. His wife is a talented jazz singer; he does not sing, which is for the best.

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