Rumor has it that Twitter is trying to promote itself as an information network rather than a social network. It’s easy to see why – recent reports indicate that consumers are increasingly using Twitter to search for the latest products, services and news.
At yesterday’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Venture Beat reports that Twitter’s cofounder, Biz Stone, announced that Twitter’s search volume has hit 800 million queries per day. This translates into 24 billion queries per month.
While up-to-date figures for worldwide search rankings have yet to be released, this jump in Twitter queries indicates the social platform may have surpassed search engines Bing and Yahoo. They garner about 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion monthly queries respectively, according to comScore data released at the start of 2010. Still, the “information network” has a long way to go if it wants to catch up with search giant Google, which garners a reported 88 billion queries per month.
Nonetheless, a recent ecommerce development from the site indicates that Twitter intends to monetize its quickly growing, searchable site. Twitter’s new @earlybird Exclusive Offers partners with businesses to retweet time-sensitive offers, advanced promotions or events they have created specifically for their Twitter audience.
The social media platform is going to be choosy – it says it will only partner with brands that provide users truly interesting and unique deals. In turn, it is building up the offers to users, claiming that the account will “consistently provide exceptional value” to followers and encouraging them to check in for the latest from favorite brands every day.
Taking advantage of this feature and the recently launched Twitter Places could be key to boosting brand awareness, and following paid search developments on the site is advised. Last spring, Twitter reached 100 million users and it is predicted to keep growing.
