Brian Chappell at Ignite Social Media in North Carolina was one of the recently selected users given access to test Twitter’s new search and trending features. Twitter announced on their blog that a random subset of users would be selected while they tested the features. But as of last week, more and more people were finding the features on their home pages, indicating that Twitter may be rolling out the features across the service.
The new features see the top menu navigation revamped to read, from left to right: Home, Find People, Help, Sign Out, Trends, Search. You’ll now access your Profile and Settings beside your avatar on your home page.
Entering a keyword into the search field opens a search result page within the Twitter interface, with the Tweeted results below, similar to what you would see on search.twitter.com. According to Wired, the search functionality itself has not changed and you are still not able to search the tweets of subsets of people, like those whom you follow.
The right-hand sidebar area, where followers and following information normally appears, is replaced by Matching users, Featured user and Trending topics.
Matching users are those whose names match the search terms and the results are sorted by those with the most followers. The implication is that people who are already popular and at the top of the list, will receive even more followers from this added exposure.
According to Chappell’s post, Featured user “appears to be some of the top Twitter users in the system”. The criteria for occupying the Featured user spot is unknown.
Trending topics appears below in the sidebar, just as it does on search.twitter.com
Back at the main menu on your home page, the Trends drop down menu displays the same real-time updated trending topics without having to exit to another window. Brian Chappell’s screencast shows all the new features being tested:
It’s clear that Twitter is still experimenting with fully integrating search and trend features into its interface. Twitter has operated these functions at search.twitter.com since last July, when it bought Summize.com, the developers of the features.
{ 2 comments }
