Existential inquisition

Social media site Twitter revamped its people search feature, making it easier for users to track down friends, family and colleagues.

Twitter launched a search feature in April '07, but the offering was perceived as "fairly underwhelming" by critics in the blogosphere. The updated name search is faster and more relevant. It also has a phonetic similarity algorithm, the company wrote.

The algorithm operates like spell check for names: users that type in "Even Williams," for instance, are asked, "Did you mean Evan Williams?"

In July, Twitter acquired search engine Summize to index its posts, promising to revamp its search feature "in the very near future," but a September redesign left the community wanting. Also absent from the redesign was the long-anticipated business model, either by advertising or by charging businesses for use of its service.

Twitter briefly used its real estate during the election to promote a deal with Current TV, John Battelle observed. Besides that, the pages have remained ad-free.

Still, Twitter bears a number of similarities to Google in terms of potential revenue models, Battelle wrote, predicting it would ultimately leverage search as a proxy for data and pattern recognition. The new search suggest feature, for example, could be used to host advertising. (Google recently incorporated sponsored links and text ads in its own search suggest offering.)

Twitter grew tremendously this year and shows few signs of slowing, reports HubSpot. 20% of users have joined in the past 60 days, and 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are opened daily.

In November, it was revealed that Facebook attempted to buy Twitter for $500 million of its own stock. The latter refused.