From the beginning, Twitter founder Biz Stone has argued that the service isn't a social network, and if the latest figures reported by VentureBeat are to be believed, he may just be right.
According to the industry blog, Stone told delegates at the Aspen Ideas Festival recently that Twitter was now serving 800 million search results every day or 24 billion searches a month. Based on Twitter's own estimates of 600 million a day back in April, that represents growth of around 33 per cent in just a few months.
While the number of searches handled by search engines isn't regularly published, figures such as the 4.1 billion searches per month attributed to Bing back in December suggest that if Twitter was a conventional search engine, it would be comfortably the leading alternative to Google.
Twitter's rapid growth as a search outlet illustrates the growing desire for real-time information on just-popular topics a desire traditional search engines have been moving fast to respond to.
However, while recent changes to the likes of Google have seen a higher and higher priority given to just-surfaced information the recent Caffeine update was largely designed for just that purpose functions such as Trending Topics have been central to Twitter's popularity from its launch in late 2006.
Of course, the real-time nature of Twitter's search model means many of those 24 billion search results are auto-delivered responses to tag-based searches, but there are signs that Twitter is looking at ways to formalise and monetise its search facility.
The site has just launched @earlybird, a service for businesses to retweet time-sensitive exclusive offers, advanced promotions or events with their Twitter clients. It says it will only partner with brands it feels provide interesting and unique deals, but promises to "consistently provide exceptional value" to followers.
