It looks like the Twitter search box on the front page thing is coming to the mainstream. It was recently announced but only available to a very limited number of people.

More people are seeing this along with a pull-down menu for trends now, including myself. I never get these types of things before other people, so that’s probably a sign it’s on the way very shortly for everybody else.

Perhaps Twitter decided to nudge the ball into rolling motion with the announcement of Facebook’s Twitterish changes coming next week. Real-time search is about to get big.

Another interesting thing that Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal points out is that Twitter is showing what looks like sponsored search results. On Twitter SERPs, you will see a "Featured User" box on the right. One example in a search I conducted was for Whole Foods, which just happens to be the second most popular brand on Twitter according to Electric Artists’ tracking.

"Think they’re paying for this?" he asks about a "feature user" he came across – the New York Times. Perhaps that revenue model isn’t too far off.