Name Search is Back at Twitter!

December 24, 2008

by Steven

Twitter has finally restored the people search capability to the website.

It’s astonishing that a site this successful managed to get by without this type of functionality for as long as it had, but this retuning capability now means that you can search for fellow tweets by their real names. Great.

First impressions of the search have not been great. Some users have found it to be a tad buggy, throwing up random tweeter rather than the one you actually searched for.

In our tests, it seems that the search is caps sensitive – take off the caps, and as long as the person you are looking for is a Tweet, then you should be able to find them no problem.

You can search for people at the ‘Find People’ option.

Twitter has been growing rapidly

New research conducted by internet marketing company HubSpot has found that between 5,000 and 10,000 people a day are signing up for Twitter, so this search feature will come in handy in the rapidly expanding Twitterverse.

The micro-blogging site hit the news this week when one user Tweeted his account of a plane crash - which he was in.

Twitter is much more valuable when you can find the accounts of the people or organizations you care about—whether they’re friends,diggs, news organizations, or the airline that will be taking to see your family over the holidays.

You’ll notice that the new name search is much faster, more relevant, and it even has a phonetic similarity algorithm which is basically fancy talk for spell check on names.

For example, if you type in “Even Williamz” it will ask you, “Did you mean Evan Williams?”

Try out Twitter’s new Search Feature! 

or if you need to find someone who is not on Twitter, You can use American Free People Search.