Google Rolls Out Two New Twitter Tools

One tool heps you see a term's popularity on Twitter over time; the other is a is fairly typical tool of the "find people to follow" variety.

Google announced two new Twitter projects yesterday, presumably to coincide with Twitter's Chirp conference which began yesterday and runs through today.

The first is the ability to see a term's popularity on Twitter over time, and even 'replay' tweets that include that term. You search on a term in Google, click the Show Options link and then choose Updates (this part works now, in case you haven't tried it – I hadn't). You'll start seeing tweets in real time, or very nearly so. Above the search results you'll see a timeline that indicates visually how often your search term is being tweeted. You can drag a cursor back and forth along the timeline and the search results will change to show tweets from that period of time. You can scale the timeline to show the current year, current month, or current 24 hour period. It's easier experienced than described, and to that end Google has set up a test page where you can try it now.

Searching Twitter from Google already seems a lot "cleaner" than searching Twitter from Twitter and as a bonus, "Promoted Tweets" don't show up in Google (though I suppose that may change). The timeline will improve the experience even more.

The second Twitter feature Google added is called Google Follow Finder. This is fairly typical twitter tool of the "find people to follow" variety. Enter your twitter name, hit submit and you get two columns of twitter users. One is "Tweeps you might like" and the other is "Tweeps with similar followers." I didn't find this tool to be all that useful. Most of the suggested users weren't of interest to me; the tool seemed to think I was a Mac fan since quite a few of the highest-ranked suggestions were people from MacBreak Weekly. Boy, when Google gets it wrong, Google really gets it wrong. Beyond the first handful, there were people I am interested in...but I'm already Following them! Clearly the tool needs some fine tuning and some filters, but if you're just getting started it might be of some help. When you do find someone to Follow, you're supposed to be able to Follow them right from the site (the UI for this is currently in place but I got an error when I tried to use it).

Google Documents get an upgrade

In a challenge to Microsoft's dominant position in office productivity software, Google on Monday began offering an array of upgrades to its Internet-based office applications, including the ability to have as many as 50 people work simultaneously on a piece of writing or a spreadsheet.

The upgrade to Google Documents comes just weeks before Microsoft begins rolling out its Office 2010 software to businesses, a crucial release for the Redmond, Wash., software giant, when it will introduce new versions of its Office and SharePoint products that also will allow workers to do real-time collaboration.

The Google Docs upgrades will roll out to users over the next few days. They are designed to make the company's Internet-based word-processing and spreadsheet products faster and more functional, adding basic writing features like automatic spell-complete and tab stops. But perhaps the most significant addition is to allow a large group of people to cooperatively draft a contract, or to analyze a sales problem with a spreadsheet, in real-time.

"It's a little bit of an in your face to Microsoft, because Microsoft is adding co-authoring into its 2010 package," said Melissa Webster, an analyst with the research firm IDC. "Google is upping the ante in an area where they are particularly strong, right before Microsoft's launch."

Google Docs has long allowed for the sharing of documents among multiple users, but there was a limited ability to have two or more people work together on the same thing at the same time. In the new version, everyone sees the changes as they are typed in. The feature will include an instant messenger component, identifying who is doing what action and allowing collaborators to comment on revisions.

"You all know you're working on the same version of the document," said Jonathan Rochelle, a group product manager for Google who said Docs offers a superior platform for collaboration than Microsoft's package.

A Microsoft executive countered that the company's collaborative features would offer a key feature Google doesn't — the ability to run its software either within an organization's network, or on the Internet "cloud."

"If you're the CIA, you don't want to use our data center; you want to run this yourself," Microsoft senior vice president Chris Capossela said in an interview. In terms of the privacy and security of their data, "many people still have questions about the cloud."

Microsoft also said it would offer many functions, like the ability to cut and paste across applications, that Google Docs does not.

Microsoft's Office software has the dominant position among business users, with about 100 million licenses, and its office and related business software comprises almost one third of the company's sales. Microsoft plans to begin rolling out Office 2010 to businesses in mid-May. In terms of importance, it's "the biggest release we've ever done," Capossela said.

Ted Schadler, an analyst with the research firm Forrester, said that for most people, choosing between basic software tools like word processing, spreadsheets and calendars won't be an either-or decision between the two companies.

"We're all comfortable using multiple tools," Schadler said. "My personal feeling is this is not going to be as much as a displacement strategy for Google, as it's going to become an extension strategy."

Webster said the intense competition is sure to benefit one group — users.

"It's a really interesting battle here," she said. "Competition always fosters great products."

Google adds site speed to search mix

Google's famous recipe for determining how sites get ranked in search results has a new ingredient: site speed.

Two of Google's top search engineers--Google Fellow Amit Singhal and principal engineer Matt Cutts--announced the addition Friday, after hinting it would be coming for several months. It's actually been live for a few weeks, they said in a blog post Friday, and Google is using a variety of components to ascertain how much faster one Web page responds compared to another.

In general, one of Google's operating philosophies is that faster is better. It's not just them, either: the increased demand for real-time information shows just how much people want sites and pages to load quickly, and the world's attention spans certainly aren't getting any longer.

Still, speed will not trump relevancy in search rankings. Search Engine Land noted that Google employs over 200 factors in considering where to rank a search result, and Google said the change should affect fewer than 1 percent of search query results.

Site owners can use a wide variety of tools from Google, Yahoo, and third-party developers to measure the speed of their Web pages.