Both Google and Microsoft’s Bing have added new features to the Twitter feeds included in their search-engine results.
While Google has gone for a visual timeline that allows people to track certain times inside a constantly updating stream of tweets that appear in the search results, Bing has introduced real-time tweets in its search results – something Google has previously incorporated.
What is interesting about Google’s timeline is that you can zoom to any point in time and ‘replay’ what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.
The Twitter graph for the topic or keyword you have searched has a slider that can be moved about to a particular time, say, when the news first broke or when conversation about it peaked. Moving the slider to a certain point will display tweets from this moment in time below the graph.
The replay feature is rolling out now in the English language initially and the first phase of its release will allow you to explore tweets going back to 11 February 2010, and soon with the ability to go to the very first tweet on 21 March 2006.
This will please old-school Twitter users who have found that they cannot go back to Twitter archives through Twitter’s own homepage.
By Marie Boran
Photo: Google’s timeline allows users to track certain times inside an updating stream of tweets
