Probably nobody would have bet a single cent on them but they got around 7% of votes at this European Election, obtaining a seat at the European Parliament. It’s quite of an achievement, considering it’s just a bunch of guys and not some seasoned liar dressed as a politician.

Probably nothing is going to change but at least the copyright free movement has finally gained an institutional value which is a huge step towards their fight for copyright freedom.

I hope this is gonna make realiza people how screwed the music and cinema industry are an how stupid is to send people to jail for downloading stuff.

But looking ahead the copyright issue I guess there’s much more they can do, way more than the average politician. They’re independent from lobbies (they actually fight against them) and this attitude can only have positive outcomes in whatever field the’d be asked to express their views, considering the utter-capitalistic nature of our society.

Despite the world economic downturn, Apple gets 3 spots on the top ten. One of his products got this popular to overtake it’s own brand.

I guess this is the best demonstration of how innovation, research and real care for customers needs can actually make any company grow, in spite of the worst crisis ever.

By the way, check the original article here, at Marketing Charts.

According to this CNET report,  Twitter will feature a search algorithm which will be able to:

crawl the links included in tweets and begin to index the content of those pages. [...] Twitter Search will also get a “reputation” ranking system soon [...]

After all, it was easy to predict. Plenty of people has been wondering that this would have happened sooner or later.
The question is if it would be able to gain a tiny share of the search engine market, considering Google evergrowing power and

If they really want to go this way they should come to terms with two main issues:

Gain some content authority

They should get a rid of all those bots and try to better develop and organize a following system able to guarantee some sort of authority: too many people add friends randomly trying to get hopefully followed themselves. This can affect link reputation and ranking system, if they’re really keen to develop one. I guess this is the first issue the should deal with.

Get safe and make people feel safer

Hacking Twitter is a bloody joke. It’s unbelievable easy. They must deal with it and sort things out as soon as possible. No service can grow in the market if people do not feel safe enough to use it and share data.

However, Twitter is still able to seduce investors. I guess it’s the proof that its search model could really work anyway. New rumors are spreading about Apple considering investing some bucks on it.
Apparently this first quarter Apple’s financial result make people wonder what will be the next step: maybe buying Twitter or jump into the videogame bandwagon with Electronic Arts?

Whatever will be, Twitter has already gained a prominent position into the market, soon things will change, and Google will have to make its move.

Before going through any possible speculation about Twitter as a search engine, it is crucial to give a proper definition to Twitter itself.

What really is Twitter?

Instant messaging platform? Social network? None of the above?

The other day I bumped in what I reckon is the best definition up to date about Twitter. According to Kevin Ryan from Search Engine Watch:

Twitter is a search engine that indexes conversations about content

Going further in analyzing Twitter through this description, he also defines another crucial aspect:

Popularity isn’t determined by backlinking in the traditional SEO sense, but self-designated by the number of retweets and followers.

…which basically defines quality information, as for every search engine.

The Twitter Search Engine

So, if we realized what Twitter actually is, let’s take a look around its main features as a search engine.

The interesting thing though is that the search feature only appears at the very bottom of twitter.com. Moreover, it’s worth to check the advanced search feature, which has plenty of features for real time search.

Why are these feature not properly exploited yet? Do you think we’re gonna see a TwitterAdWords or TwitterAdsense anytime soon?

Gmail Filters made easy

Some time ago Google has made available a new feature by which you can upload filters with an XML file.

The good thing about this is that you can just write down a single file and define all the filters in there and then load them at once.

The file structure will look like this:

<entry>
    <title>Mail Filter</title>
    <apps:property name='from' value='semwired@gmail.com'/>
    <apps:property name='label' value='semwired mails'/>
</entry>

You can easily download, share and upload new filters from Settings -> Filters.