Webware 100 Editors' Choice: Twitter Search (Look out, Google)

Site: Search.twitter.com
Category: Editors' Choice; Look out, Google

Twitter itself is fun. Twitter Search, though, is another thing entirely. Twitter Search provides real-time search results on timely issues and news that even Google can't touch. It's this feature, not the Twitter social network, that could end up being Twitter's true path to revenue, as well as the feature that knocks Google off its peg as the master of all search.

Even Google execs have acknowledged that dealing with real-time search is one of the company's most important challenges. Twitter has stuck a pin in Google, and it's hurting. Twitter could, of course, simply choose to monetize its search engine using Google's own advertising technologies. But Twitter is getting big enough that it might not need Google for that. So what will Google do?