Twitter dumbing down search?

Those with sharp eyes will have noticed that Twitter has been playing around with its search options again. Instead of the search option being top right of the screen it's now moved into the right hand column with trending topics below:

Previously trending topics were displayed using a pull down menu. Results now appear directly into the Twitter stream in place of the timeline, which can be a little disconcerting to begin with. Users have also lost the basic hints for doing an advanced search, which is a retrograde step in my opinion. If you're going to be playing with search surely you want to emphasis the flexibility of the resource rather than hide it away? The one option that I do like, as you can see, is the opportunity to save a search.

If you choose this option the search is stored below the search box, with an option at the top of the results to remove the search, which is quite elegant.

Hard core Twitter search users can still go direct to the 'old' version at http://search.twitter.com/

or the advanced search option http://search.twitter.com/advanced which gives a full listing of the various search options available, such as searching by location, dates, attitudes, language and people. I'm slightly baffled as to why Twitter is keeping this so quiet to be honest - these are really nice features and I think they should be shouting about them (and improving them!), rather than dumbing down search.

Comments

[Jim Richardson]

See also http://tinyurl.com/cqfb7f for a post by @shifted plus comments on lack of longevity in Twitter search.

Phil notes "dumbing down" of search. Hopefully this does not reflect a lack of commitment to preserving Twitter via search as a long-term archive. I realise that doing so is costly and resource-intensive, so not easy in the absence of a revenue stream.

I wonder if Twitter has considered providing full historical search as a charged service? I for one would be willing to pay a reasonable monthly fee for this.