Is Twitter on its way downhill when it comes to being 'the best search engine'? Just a month back I read all these blog posts about how Twitter and Google are competing to be the best search engine sites with real time.
But I think we spoke too soon.
A few days ago, I was checking the trending topics on my Twitter account and I noticed that Rick Astley was on the top of the list.
I clicked on it to find out what it is all about and all I could see was a stream of spam tweets - the kind of tweet that just lists all the 10 different trending topics.
I kept refreshing it but apart from the spam all I could see were other confused tweets about why Rick Astley is trending or just unrelated and unhelpful tweets with his name mentioned.
That is when I turned to Google.
And the first result I got after typing Rick Astley in the search box was of the news report with an explanation of what was going on.
Apparently the rumor that Rick Astley has also passed away was spreading like wildfire.
And the spammers on Twitter were no help.
They kept the confusion alive.
So is Google back on top of the list when it comes to a reliable search engine? Were we just kidding ourselves into thinking that a live stream of organic micro blogs will prove to be the ultimate real time search engine? Were we too quick to trust the random individual from whom we would get the information to begin with? I really hope not.
The ideal thing to happen now would be for Twitter to somehow find a way to stop these spammers from their constant interference with what could be a very healthy and informative community.
If nothing is done to stop them then I'm afraid all this Twitter mania would be nullified.
No more real time search results for us.
At least not from Twitter.
So what will Google Wave do? Will they have some smart solution to this problem? I really hope so.
Because if Google Wave is what it promises to be, then it would be a real shame if it were to have a fate like Twitter seems to have right now.
Or maybe I am just overreacting.
Certainly it is just the trending topics that would be affected this way? Spammers head straight to the gold after all.
So anything else that you try to search for will be OK since they will be pure tweets by genuine people.
Okay, so that is one good thing.
But still the trending topics section is way too useful to be subjected to spammers.
I am sure eventually it will be ignored by us because of the constant stream of nonsense.
All I can do is talk about it and complain but I really hope someone has a real solution to this Social Media problem.
If you have any suggestions why don't you leave a comment below?