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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009, 12:25 pm
Twoogle

In case anyone cares, today I are trying an experiment: every time I want to do a Google search, I'm using Twitter search instead - posting reactions @hatmandu with the hashtag #twoogle. Will post reflections here tomorrow.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:29 pm (UTC)
[info]editor

How very cromulent of you.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:32 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

Nice - but Twitter actually has really good results for that, including a link to Wiktionary!
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:39 pm (UTC)
[info]rickbot

My most recent Google search was aimed at identifying the link between Kinmen county in Taiwan, and Jinmen. How does Twoogle do on that?
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:51 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

It doesn't, as wellyouknewitwouldn't!

In fairness one ought to mention Google has a decade's more data behind it... (etc etc)
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:52 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

Though not actually useless at all for the separate terms.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:53 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

Anyway, DO YOUR OWN SEARCHES, PUNY MORTALS!
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:57 pm (UTC)
[info]rickbot

Hatmandoogle

In case anyone cares, today I are trying an experiment: every time I want to do a Google search, I'm asking Hatmandu to run a Twitter search instead - posting reactions @rickbox with the hashtag #hatmandoogle. Will post reflections here tomorrow.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 01:11 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

WhyIoutta...
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 12:56 pm (UTC)
[info]rickbot

Well indeed, Wikipedia was the best search engine in this case.

I found they are different spellings of the same placename, which is why I suspected no one would twitter about it.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 01:11 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

Yes, I was gonna say that: I haven't suddenly stopped using Wikipedia.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 02:31 pm (UTC)
[info]jvvw

I've done two google searches so far today ('php' and 'drupal theme comment form') both looking for stuff that I could have found without google but which it was quicker to get to by typing it in the google search bar. In the first was I was just too lazy to type 'www' before and '.net' after php.
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Wed, Feb. 25th, 2009 02:51 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

I think we all do that 'use google as address bar' thing - it's when people do the opposite that's more of a worry!
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Thu, Feb. 26th, 2009 03:02 pm (UTC)
[info]undyingking

when people do the opposite that's more of a worry

What's wrong with that? - saves having to have a separate Google-search-term entry box cluttering up your screen, if you can just use the address bar for that purpose.

I like the way this is standard in Chrome: anything you type into the address bar that it can't interpret as an url, it instead treats as a Google search.
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Thu, Feb. 26th, 2009 03:09 pm (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

Yes, fair point; I really was thinking of people I know who just don't get the internet properly and type stuff in the 'wrong' places because they're not aware of there actually being different places. But I guess you could argue that's a usability rather than a user fault.

As for Chrome - I'm a Mac user, so I'm not privileged with the sight of Chrome!
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Sun, Mar. 1st, 2009 12:49 pm (UTC)
[info]sillage

Where are the much anticipated reflections on the trial? I did a quick test myself, and found that Twitter was almost, but not entirely, totally useless as a search engine...
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Mon, Mar. 2nd, 2009 09:06 am (UTC)
[info]hatmandu

I Twittered a summary, but wasn't sure anyone here was interested... I agree that it's not great - but then again it wasn't ever intended to be a search engine in the way Google is anyway. It's poor for getting facts, for fine-grained control and for speed (as you often have to drill through user conversations), and lacks all 'did you mean?' stemming and similar word features etc. Where it's interesting is finding other people with similar questions to your own, which have often been answered by people in their network; also great for finding people undergoing similar experiences to you, if that's of interest. In short, again it's about the people. So far I think Twitter is proving a very good way of finding strangers with shared interests, and they are sometimes good people to have found.
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