Twitter: The Next Piece in Google’s Semantic Web Puzzle

The seemingly endless media and industry fawning over Twitter has lead to the widespread debate over the merits of real-time search and the future of the search industry. Yes, Twitter is an amazing service that allows people to share their thoughts, however poignant, painful or pointless, on events as they happen. However, the hype is reaching a fever pitch only exacerbated by Google acquisition rumors. With that in mind, it’s time to try and figure out exactly where this wonderful new medium belongs in the world of search.

It has been suggested that Google is looking to acquire Twitter because it views it as a threat. That line of thinking is completely insane because Google isn’t going anywhere. The company is still the top dog in terms of financial stability, commitment to innovation and business strategy. Depending on what research firm you ask, Google owns roughly 80 percent of the search engine market and is still gobbling up market share. In terms of users, Twitter doesn’t even match Facebook’s potential as a rival. Twitter is simply not a threat to Google; in fact, the search giant could simply consume the Twitter API. The good news is that it probably won’t because Twitter is a piece of the greater problem Google is looking to solve.

Facebook Opens Up Its Stream API To Developers. Let The Conversation Wars Begin!

Facebook has opened up its activity stream through a new API for developers. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream. One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop , A Twitter client which is now adding your Facebook feed through this API (something Tweetdeck already did in the past through other more restrictive means). Facebook has also created its own desktop notification client to demonstrate what can be built with the API.

Facebook copies Twitter again, Facebook is doing everything wrong

Last month, Jason Calacanis wrote he’d pay $250,000 to be listed as a Twitter “Suggested Follow ” for two years. Getting on Twitter’s “suggested” list can drive hundred of thousands of people to follow a Twitter feed. Facebook has taken notice, and this weekend has started recommending Facebook fan pages of some public personas and brand on its own site. (Sarah Lacy, Julia Allison, and Mark Cuban have all already made Facebook’s list.

Twitter is no more, Flutter / Nanoblogging is here

If you don’t have time to microblog, nanoblog! – interactive marketing blog special.

Twitter Seek Profit and Confirms Paid Pro Accounts On The Way

As Twitter’s growth explodes, speculation has intensified about whether the service can be profitable. Twitter’s online traffic, excluding cellphones, surged to nearly 9.8 million unique visitors in February from 6.1 million in January, according to comScore. In pursuit of revenue, Twitter faces the same challenge that has dogged social-networking platforms like Facebook. If advertisers can tap into its network free of charge, why would they pay the company to do so?

Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Part 1 / 2 of free social media monitoring and measuring tools list: list of tools to be used in techniques described on Part 2 / 2 - Free Social Media Monitoring Techniques – interactive marketing blog special.

Free Social Network

• Facebook Insights - free social network Insights Tool

Brand Overviews

• HowSociable? - A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics
• Addict-o-matic - A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence
• socialmention - A social media search engine offering searches across individual platforms (eg blogs, microblogs) or all, together with a ‘social rank’ score. Whether or not the score is transparent enough to be meaningful is open to debate.

Blog Search Tools

• TECHNORATI Search - Technorati’s new search interface. Use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.
• TECHNORATI Advanced - Technorati’s advanced search page allows you to search for blogs (rather than posts) based on tags.
• Google Blog Search - Google’s index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria. Very good for searching between specific dates.
• IceRocket - Blog search tool that also graph-ifies!
• BlogPulse - Search for blog posts by keyword. Developed by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.