Real-time is the future and real-time starts with Twitter?

It was about time to relaunch the Twitter front page and some days ago, Mashable already mentioned this next step. From the old front page it was nearly impossible to understand what this platform is all about, the new one shows what this platform could be in the future…

Twitter becomes more like a mixture of user-generated CNN, Facebook and Google in taking the best of bread from all platforms. It is a real time information exchange news service in a social networking coat.

Now, their new front page focuses on their biggest benefit for every single user in the world: their real-time search engine. In placing this in the main center of attraction and attention, Twitter leaves a lot of open space for thoughts and speculations about their future strategy in expanding their business (and business value).

The new real-time strategy is supported by the three tag lines…
– Popular topics right now (main tags real-time search)
– Popular topics today (last 24 hours)
– Popular topics this week (last 7 days)

Will they finally follow the Google business? At least some kind of similar bottom up strategy can be seen in this approach. A road that Google started off some years ago…

Compared to the old front page (see right), the main benefit of Twitter becomes more clear now for new users and makes the USP of the platform obvious right from the start.

If we are just talking about search and the business benefit of “being and knowing first-to-market”, this will be a clear winner for Twitter compared to Google where search results for certain topics can be some years old.

Real-time is the future (of news business) and real-time starts with Twitter?