It should be noted that most Twitterers won’t ever see the new homepage, unless they logout of course. But, the new layout isn’t for the "everyday Twitter user", it’s meant for the non-tweeting crowd, or those that don’t see the use for it. Recently, WebProNews featured an article, "The Average American Still Unfamiliar With Twitter", which discussed this very topic. It seems as though Twitter hopes the new homepage will help herd in some of the non-Twitter users.

Do you think the new homepage will help get new users? Tell us.

Twitter Search – Is Twitter competing with search engines now?

With Twitter’s inclusion of search, on the homepage, they’ve now made Twitter useful… even for those who refuse to tweet. WebProNews’ Chris Crum wrote an article about this very topic, and here’s his take on what might happen with Twitter search:

"When a new user comes along to discover Twitter for the first (or even second or third) time, they’ll see that search box. They’ll say to themselves, "What is this? I thought Twitter was just some pointless way to tell people what I am having for breakfast. It’s a search engine now?" Then they will start to understand that there is more to gain from Twitter than what they previously thought."

You might be asking, "What is the big advantage to a Twitter search versus, let’s say Google?" The answer is simple. With Twitter, you get real-time results (which is the next big thing in search). Twitter even highlights this aspect on the new homepage with the following header:

But, don’t think for a second that Google doesn’t know they’re late to the party, in regards to real-time search. Google’s own Larry Page has even stated:

"I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real-time search.  At first, my team laughed and did not believe me.  With Twitter, now they know they have to do it.  Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about real-time."

Will Twitter be able to lure some searchers away from Google? Let us know what you think.

Trending Topics… umm… I mean Popular Topics

By now you’ve probably noticed that Twitter has added "popular topics" to the homepage. But, these aren’t your everyday, profile page, trending topics. With these you can now see what’s popular right now, today and this week.

If you’re still unclear what the popular topics are about, Twitter offers the following description :

"Twitter looks at every incoming tweet, then ranks the popularity of certain words or phrases in real time. Click any of the popular topics below to see what people are saying about them right now."

The new popular topics, coupled with search, seems to be a strategy that Twitter is employing hoping it leads to new users. @Biz had the following to say about this on the Twitter blog:

"…demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, "How do I get involved?""

What are your thoughts about the new "Popular Topics"? Tell us.

Popular Topics / Search Results Pages

Let’s say you want to see why "Apple Claims New" is a popular topic, so you click it. You’re then taken to a re-vamped results page, with an added element. Twitter now displays a description of why the topic is popular.

This new description will come in very handy when those odd terms creep up into the popular topics. Below, you can read Twitter’s description of this new addition:

"Twitter looks at every incoming tweet, then ranks the popularity of certain words or phrases in real time. Click any of the popular topics below to see what people are saying about them right now. Some topic descriptions are sourced from What The Trend."

Besides the new description, the results pages are pretty much the same… but they do sport the new updated design. I do wish Twitter would’ve incorporated the FriendFeed sort of ajax auto-refreshing thing they do, that could be turned off and on, of course. (It should be noted that the search results pages look identical.)

Do you find the new descriptions helpful, or distracting? Let us know.

Twitter’s New Search Tips

Upon clicking a popular topic, or doing a search, you’ll notice a new feature in the column, a "Search Tip". Sure, these tips aren’t anything to write home about, but they do highlight some of the underused search operators. I’ve included a few examples of them below:

"Use source: immediately before a particular Twitter source (like a desktop or mobile app) to find tweets posted via that client. Example: weather source:tweetie will find tweets containing "weather" and entered via Tweetie."

"Use until: immediately before a specific date to find tweets sent before and until that date. Example: ftw until:2009-07-16 will find tweets containing "ftw" and sent until date "2009-07-16" (year-month-day)."

Do you currently use any Twitter search operators? Tell us.

Twitter’s Sign up Page

Twitter’s sign up page is probably my biggest complaint with the new design. Why didn’t Twitter update the sign up page with the new look? Isn’t this page the most important to them? It’s the one that brings in the new users.

The sign up page seems very dull and boring when you compare it with the new look. They could’ve at least changed the color scheme to match, but maybe since this page is working well for them, they didn’t want to change it. Personally for me, it feels very disconnected from the new modern look they got going on.

Should Twitter update the design of the sign up page? Tell us.

More Work Ahead

Even though the new Twitter homepage looks great, @Biz is quick to add that they still have a lot of work to do:

"We have a lot of work to do when it comes to the quality of our search results and trend analysis but repositioning the product to focus more on discovery is an important first step in presenting Twitter to a wider audience of folks around the world who are eager to start engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, events, and sources of information.

We’ll likely continue to make changes to the Twitter home page as we respond to feedback and ideas. We’re eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter."

What are some changes you would recommend for the Twitter homepage? Let us know.

If you want to know my thoughts on iGoogle as a social media entity, read my article here. Suffice it to say, I think it is an ideal place for Google to create a central hub for its own social products and features.

Unsurprisingly, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are involved. I hear Kutcher’s up to 2 million on Twitter too, by the way. Oprah must not be an iGoogle user though, because she is MIA, although, I guess it would be more appropriate if she joined the initiative much later. It could certainly do a lot for iGoogle usage though. You’ll probably recall her quite heavy influence on Twitter.

With the iGoogle showcase, Google not only allows you to view the homepages of these celebrities, but add their gadgets to your homepage "a ala carte." For each celebrity, the gadgets are listed with links to add them to your own iGoogle page.

Celebrities featured in the showcase include:

- Al Gore
- Anna Sui
- Demi Moore
- Dave Matthews
- Ashton Kutcher
- Martha Stewart
- Keith Urban
- Betsey Johnson
- Donald Trump
- Katie Couric
- Wyclef Jean
- Kevin Rose
- Rachel Ray
- Andy Roddick
- Queen Rania
- Arianna Huffington
- Anderson Cooper
- Ryan Seacrest
- Deepak Chopra
- Anne Geddes
- Seth Godin
- Vint Cerf
- Tim Ferriss
- Tim Brown
- Dean Ornish
- Tony Hsieh
- Shawn Fanning
- Charles Huang
- Stephen Bliss
- Tina Sharkey

Well, Yahoo’s not an official sponsor, but the message was co-branded with a Rogers Internet message warning customers nearing their monthly bandwidth limit.

Los Angeles-based technology consultant and Network Neutrality advocate Lauren Weinstein was clued in by "a concerned reader" that Rogers was testing its Internet Subscriber Notification Service that uses java script code developed by in-browser marketing firm PerfTech to deliver the Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet messages.

Weinstein writes, "While Rogers’ current planned use for this Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and modification system…is for account status messages, it’s obvious that commercial ISP content and ads (beyond the ISP logos already displayed) would be trivial to introduce through this mechanism."

Rogers justified the program by saying it was just a way for customers to keep track of their usage, and noted that there was no interference with the search. They also denied there was any "deep package" inspection going on, or that there were any privacy issues.

But critics say it’s very basic premise – modifying a webpage at the network level – that is disturbing. TechDirt CEO Mike Masnick relates how inserting corporate messages violates an unwritten contract where customers expect their ISPs to remain unobtrusive "dumb pipes."

"[ISPs] feel that they are more important than the content and services you are using. This is what leads to all those network neutrality debates, where the ISPs forget that they’re providing just a pipe and think that they are the most important part of the process and have the right to change how everything else works. "

Masnick doesn’t believe this is justification for Network Neutrality legislation, but Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired expects it "become Exhibit A" among proponents.

Canadian blogger Steven Hodson’s complaints mirror the complaints made in the United States about the current state of the ISP market, which involves lack of competition, too much telco influence in government, and no government oversight:

"The things is that while it is the Americans that seem most worried about this intrusion by the ISP just about every Canadian knows that chances are nothing at all is going to be done to protect the consumer from this type of thing continuing just as nothing will be done about the rampant traffic shaping that is going on."  

Google hasn’t yet responded to request for comment regarding Rogers’ modification of its homepage, but Google’s webspam head Matt Cutts called the event "uncool." Chances are good Google won’t like it, and Cutts calls it the "only chance to see the word ‘Yahoo!’ on Google’s home page in three different places."  

"The specs clearly weren’t written by people with any experience in writing technical standards," writes Tim Lee, an expert author at the TechDirt Insight Community. "While a well-written standard will very precisely specify which behaviors are required, which are prohibited, and under what circumstances, the ACAP spec is full of vague directives and confusing terminology."

Indeed, if you look at the list of members, you’ll notice a trend: it’s all publishers, many of which have had their legal conflicts with Google especially. It consists of the Associated Press, Association of American Publishers, Agence-France Presse, among many, many others.

As described on the ACAP homepage, the standard is intended to become a universal permissions protocol that allows content owners to communicate permissions for access and use of online content. In short, it’s intended as a way for publishers to tell search engines exactly what can and cannot be done with their content.

And while the idea might be acceptable and even have "promise," James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at New York Law School with expertise in both computer technology and law, says the vague, imprecise technical language of it could leave it open for expansive interpretations under the law:

"I’m concerned that the publishers will soon argue that failure to respect every last detail expressed in an ACAP file will constitute automatic copyright infringement, breach of contract, trespass to computer systems, a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (and related state statutes), trespass vi et armis, highway robbery, land-piracy, misappropriation, alienation of affection, and/or manslaughter."

Some might note a hint of sarcasm there.

This is neither; although we didn’t know it was going to happen, it’s actually quite logical that the Google Talk Gadget would gain support for 19 more languages.

Google puts the number at 20, yet I’m standing by my belief that “English (UK)” really isn’t all that different from what we Americans speak. 

The true 19 languages, then, are Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

If you want to use the Google Talk Gadget in one of these languages (or just want to see what it looks like), the company’s own Katya Rogers provided instructions on the Google Talkabout blog. 

“To access the Google Talk Gadget in your language, go to the Google Talk homepage, select your language in the drop-down menu in the top right, and click on the ‘launch Google Talk Gadget’ link,” she wrote.

Rogers then continued, “Or you can simply add the Google Talk gadget to your iGoogle home page.”  This also makes sense, as product integration seems to be an area in which Google’s trying to get ahead.

While Google’s RE<C announcement was frankly astonishing, sometimes it’s nice not to be surprised; the development related to the Google Talk Gadget, though far from groundbreaking, neatly proves this point.

Still, the potentially neat thing about the redesign is its ever-changing nature.  “msnbc.com is able to creatively shift layouts and rich media surrounding news content as it happens,” said the company in a statement.  “Unlike limited templates used by most news sites, msnbc.com’s new platform enables its editors and designers to create new layouts at break-neck speed to surround its compelling stories with a range of high quality video, photography, slide shows, graphics, audio and more.”

Also, people associated with the site appear quite open to suggestions – Wells, along with Editor in Chief Jennifer Sizemore, invited comments following their posts about the redesign.

None of this is enough to draw me away from the BBC.  Still, it’s nice to see the hard work and innovation that went into MSNBC.com, and the redesign is sure to earn it some new followers.

Google’s well-known simplicity goes straight out the window with this version, which features tabs, animated icons, pictures, and rows upon rows of text.  We’ve seen small adjustments before – animated icons were introduced in Korea – but this is a much bigger departure from traditional Google designs.

What remains to be seen is whether, in the eyes of Chinese users, it’s an improvement.  Last week, Google China performed a moderately ingenious maneuver by claiming G.cn as its own.  It would be a pity to see that work undone, yet Google won’t want to stand still and continue losing to Baidu.

Either way, Philipp Lenssen makes it clear that the “busy” homepage hasn’t yet replaced the traditional one.  When Google will make a decision on the matter remains unknown, though, so we’ll keep an eye on Google China and give you information as it becomes available.

"That’s why all the links on Yahoo.com either go to other Yahoo properties or to Yahoo partners. These include VanityFair.com, Salon.com, SFGate.com, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo. (Disclosure: TechCrunch’s sister site CrunchGear was included when Yahoo was beta testing this feature). The sites are selected by human editors at Yahoo".

A Yahoo spokesperson reported:

"Yahoo! will select outside content from a wide variety of sites across the Internet (large and small, with sufficient traffic management capabilities), that have unique or exclusive content which will be programmed alongside our usual links to related Yahoo! content."

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I wasn’t on the homepage myself. I was following a Valleywag link to where NBC’s YouTube channel used to be. Below the "This channel not available" notice, and above the "Promoted Videos" thumbs, I was flashed.

A still shot of fellatio-in-progress. Copious side-boob that brought up a soft-core Skinamax scene. And another round of fellatio, this time (lucky fella) with two girls at the, um, helm. Let’s not leave out an ad for MilfHunters.com, either.

Not that porn is unheard of on the Internet, especially at video-sharing sites, but it was a bit shocking to see it just presented to me like a pop-up ad on YouTube, which purports to have a strict family-friendly content approach. The YouTube community usually takes care of it.

Except for hot girls making out or stripping – so long as not too much skin is showing. The community in charge of flagging content will designate those, like this one, as potentially inappropriate and slap an age-restriction on it. (It works like all other age-restriction buttons on the Internet – an honor system, as if.)

But the community, apparently, isn’t in fast enough to flag inappropriate or obscene content before it reaches the "Videos being watched right now" section.

When asked about this morning’s peep show, a YouTube spokesperson told WebProNews that the community "effectively polices the site for inappropriate material" and that once said material is flagged, it is reviewed by staff and "removed from the system within minutes."

And if they upload it again?

"We also disable the accounts of repeat offenders," said the spokesperson.

The incident is the latest example of YouTube’s struggle with the very concept that made it a cultural phenomenon; the crowd may be diligent, but the crowd is too slow for automated features, too quick to upload offending material, whether erotic or copyrighted, again. 

Parent company Google also had a few indecent images "sneak in" to the Google News page. Nude images are also against Google News’s policy. 

YouTube recently announced a new content filter to better combat users who upload copyrighted material. But go ahead, search for any musician and see if you can find their music video. Bet it’s easy.

But not as easy as passively watching current videos scroll unfiltered at the top of the homepage.

The Lights Out San Francisco organization had asked people “to turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour” and install a compact fluorescent light bulb; at the same time, Google put up a black homepage that was visible only to users in the area.  Garett Rogers has a screenshot, however, and also links to a page showing that the two groups may have had quite an effect.

Granted, a before and after shot of the Transamerica Pyramid looks pretty much the same.  But Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco City Hall became considerably darker.  Also, turning off the lights at the Palace of Fine Arts actually seems to have enhanced its appearance.

It seems slightly odd, though, for Google to have supported Lights Out San Francisco.  Granted, the company’s done plenty for the environment – from celebrating International Cleanup Weekend to putting $10 million towards sustainable transport, its efforts never end – but Google.com rarely changes.  Also, something city-specific is a little out of character.

Still, Google called this “a timely, important event,” and once we remember that the company just opened an office in San Francisco, the move seems more natural.