For all the chatter about the inanity of Twitter, ultimately it is a pretty amazing resource of what people are thinking and doing at any give time. And any time you hear ‘pretty amazing resource’, you can bet that people will try and monetize that somehow!
Google was the first of the big search players to index Twitter results, and now they are introducing a timeline feature. While there are numerous ways to see what people are thinking right now, what the new timeline feature does is present users with a graphical chart representing how much people are talking about a subject over time.
Clicking on any given time will allow you to see what people were saying about a topic then – like, say, the reaction to the Olympics on February 26th, or Apple on March 23rd. Though right now, results only go back to February of this year, Google are planning to archive tweets as far back as March 2006 (which is when Twitter launched).
While it will be rolling out across the globe over the next couple of days, if you want a live preview right now try this link. Going forward, click on “Show Options” in the search results page and then choose “Updates” to access this new feature.
Source: Google Blog
