Posts Tagged ‘updates’

Search & discovery in @twitter set to change forever after tmrw. Team – congrats and enjoy the enormity of ur impact few understand today!

— Pankaj Gupta (@pankaj) July 6, 2012

This is how the news that Twitter would be updating their Search & Discovery engine was released into the Twittersphere.

Twitter has been making some big changes to the way we use the micro-blogging platform, both for web and mobile platforms. Here’s a quick overview of the changes YOU need to know about, and how they will impact your Social Media Marketing efforts.

The Big Changes

• Auto complete for simpler searching and content discovery. By anticipating what you’re going to type and bringing up results before you’ve even finished Twitter aims to make finding exactly what you’re looking for a breeze.

• Spelling mistakes are now identified and alternatives are offered.
• See results from everyone, or only from people you follow.

• Alternative terms are identified, which makes searching in unfamiliar territory much easier.

Why this is great for SMM

• Finding your target audience just got a little bit easier. You can now find users based on their real name, username and interests. And you can find conversations that YOU want to be a part of by using the related terms function.
• Keep track of important conversations that your target audience are having by searching for key terms and then sorting by ‘People You Follow’. This a great way to keep up to date when you reach the point where reading every tweet is no longer a plausible option.

Mobile Updates

You may want to check if an update is available for your mobile Twitter app, as they’ve been busy rolling out updates for the Blackberry, iPhone and Android.

• The updates to mobile also make it easier to keep up with your audience on the go.
• Make sure you’re making good use of the new and improved expanded tweets for mobile. If you’re an etsy store owner, or you regularly upload video via Vimeo, good news – your linked content will now be available in the expanded tweet section. This will surely lead to an increase in CTR.
• Twitter events. Nascar is one of the first events to have received the full coverage treatment from Twitter. Their aim is to make these events even more social. Event organisers: watch this space!  

I’d never thought I could be a Bing person, I thought I would always be Google through and through. And then they go ahead and fix/ improve/ revolutionise the one thing that has always given me deeply troubling doubts about Google.

You guessed it, Social Search, ever since Google+ has arrived we’ve been cursing our search results as sites with the most +1′s are mysteriously pushed to the top of our searches. I don’t care if 50 people left a meaningless stamp of approval on this particular restaurant, I just want to know which restaurant is closest and serves Mexican food! I’m not alone in my frustration, Wil Wheaton recently voiced rather strong opinions about this on his blog – he claimed to be tired of having Google+ shoved down our throats.

So what exactly have Bing done that is so different?

Three. Column. Layout.

*gasp*

It’s everything that you want in a search engine, but with clear divisions. You have your pure and simple organic results to the left, a ‘snapshot’ of your search in the centre, and then social results compiled on the right.

Bing has come along in leaps and bounds to impove their search algorithm. They conducted tests which aimed to see which search results users prefered once branding was taken out of the picture. In January last year 34% of people preffered Bing while 38% preferred Google. Now, the same study shows that 43% prefer Bing over the 28% that prefer Google. Those are some fairly conclusive figures.

While Google has gone in the direction of Integrating everything in to their own Social Media agenda, Bing has embraced the trend towards keeping social seperate, but still close to hand. Bravo Bing! I know I’ll be switching.

What do you think of the new-look Bing?

via: Mashable