Twitter Search and Trends Box Appears

There’s word going round that some Twitter users have access to a seach box that has recently appeared in their toolbar up in the right-hand side of Twitter.com – they can also get a list of ‘trends’ – those hot Tweet topics that are blazing up the interweb.

So, looks like Twitter is either testing or gradually rolling out the feature.

Nothing’s appeared on mine yet but ReadWriteWeb has the search features enabled already and has kindly taken a screenshot.

Twitter’s interest in search started when they acquired Summize -  a search tool built using Twitter’s developer API (application programming interface).  That became Twitter’s Search feature.

Twitter may have a stronger motive.

Driving people to Twitter.com and away from those 3rd party apps such as Twitterific (which I use on my iPhone), TweetDeck and twhirl that are all very popular ways to get Tweeting.

Driving traffic via the Twitter.com homepage will help them get more accurate traffic and usage numbers.

We shall wait and see if there are other reasons for them to drive people directly through the site as they have yet to unveil their business plan.

What do you think?  Advertising?  Paid Corporate Plans?  Special Subscriber Benefits like Last.Fm?

Share those thoughts with us all below 🙂