Los Angeles — With the World Cup fad ended, Twitter becomes one of the top online social media networking sites for users, which is now focusing on new features again. Without wasting any time, the company has now made searching for people or brands easier. Twitter is now displaying “name results” for people in search results.
Searching for names in Twitter displays all sorts of names and tweets related to the search query. Users will now notice a new feature on Twitter.com when performing their search. Twitter has had a people search feature for several years, but it only now managed to integrate it with the regular search.
Twitter is now displaying name results as well into the searches. Now, when making a search that may involve prominent people or brands, the top 3 name results will appear along with the option to view other name results. As you can see, name results now appear in a horizontal bar above the regular real-time tweet stream for search results.
You can preview any of the accounts listed, thanks to the hovercard feature which offers you an summary of the account and also enables you to follow it from the search results with just one click. Another nice stroke is that verified accounts are labeled as such to help you make sure you are following the right person.
According to Ben Parr at Mashable, this novel concept is conceived by Nancy Broden and Twitter engineer Adrien Cahen, will now deliver the added benefit to users of being a simple and seamless way of searching people and Twitter search. As with all new design features only time will tell if users will approve of this.
The feature was first discovered by MG Siegler, and has pulled the attention of others throughout the Blogosphere. Some suggest that the feature could eventually be monetized, though this notion was downplayed by Twitter in a conversation with Siegler. As he points out, it is more a user discovery feature, which could increase follower counts substantially.
The feature greatly assists in distinguishing between a false or fake accounts – so verified accounts will be more important now on.
Also, there have been rumors about Twitter looking into “selling” followers and this may be exactly the way to do it. Similarly to the Promoted Tweets and especially Promoted Trends, a “Promoted Account” could be listed at the top of the search results for relevant queries. This would more than likely guarantee an influx of followers for that account, which Twitter could charge for.