North Rock

Tonight for the first time I saw a bar appear at the top of my Twitter page called “Hot Political Topics Election2008″. The bar had the following links; Kati Couric, GOP, Alaska, Bush, R’s, коли под наемCNN, Dems, Russia, CBS, Hillary.

The links go to Twitter’s Election2008 sub-domain where you will basically find Summize/Twitter Search tweet results appearing for the election term of your choice. It’s packaged in a smooth red, white and blue U.S. election theme.

Twiter has this statement posted on the page:

What’s this?

We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts.

With Election2008 Twitter is packaging it’s content in such a way that will draw attention from folks outside of the typical Twitterer. For the Twitter regulars this is old hat stuff we are used to viewing through what what was Summize and is now Twitter Search. But overall I think it will be a home run for Twitter because it will get main stream media attention. Get ready for another jump in Twitter use. Will we be seeing the whale being carried off to never never land again even more?

This also raises more questions.

• What other topics is Twitter going to package up? 
• Are they going to create a whole news site like page full of all the hot topics?
• When will the actual search box and results be integrated into your primary Twitter page?
• What’s the next feature coming around the corner?

Twitter finally did integrate search into my primary twitter page (& yours) and I didn’t even notice. Did it happen in the recent Twitter redesign? I can’t say for sure but I wouldn’t doubt it. So where is it? Did you not see it? Twitter stuck it down in the footer! You are correct if you say this stinks. The least Twitter could do is plop this text link up by the primary tweetin’ text box, but nooooooo, they can’t do something simple as that. How ’bout a simple search box up by the main tweetin’ box you may also ask? Noooooooooooo, are you crazy? Things gotta go by a master plan!

At the bottom of the page is where you can find this handy new feature. It’s great Twitter bought summize, eh? If you don’t have a Twitter account or you aren’t logged in to see it in the link above, you can gander at my NorthRock Twitter page or just look at this pic of it below.

The Google cache of the popular tweeter Kevin Rose shows no search link in the footer as of Sept 13, 2008. See the snagged image of it down below. I grabbed his figuring it would be cached as often and as recent as any. The cache of my page is from Sept 12 and is the same as Kevin’s.

How long before Twitter can give us a simple link? Or do we have to wait for the master plan to roll out? Sorry for the rant @ev , just had to get it out of my system.