It's finally here (you may have to log out to see the new homepage). As expect it's focused primarily on search & topics. It's good to see some real direction as many believe it's real-time search that will finally point Twitter towards some revenue and even Google thinks Twitter is winning at that game.

But in my opinion, there's still a major problem with Twitter search at the moment. It's certainly real-time and you can definitely get a good sense of current hot topics from it but if you're searching for broad terms the relevance often isn't there. So is it actually search or is it more Digg on steroids? Don't get me wrong, with some clever search queries you can get some amazingly insightful results (people to meet when you travel, current deals, city happenings) but most people won't do that and with 140 characters to choose from the query doesn't have as much chances to hit as say Google.

Twitter may need more relevance and depth and to achieve that start indexing deep into tweeted links and historical relationships between users (these guys always talk about football). Maybe we will see a "tweet score" which is connected to number of retweets and user popularity. This would mean an engine that is great at estimating what you're looking. All in real-time.

Some may say that this isn't what Twitter is good at. The real-time aspect of its content make it useful for specific searches. The issue here is that people don't use multiple search engines -- or at least very few do. People type in URLs into Google, I search Wikipedia or IMDb through Google. If they are contemplating doing "to Google what Google has done to others" they'll need search that gets you relevant as well as timely results. Otherwise they may as well just stick at only being "the pulse of the planet". How unambitious...

Got this in the mail today (thanks Chris). While I usually don't spend much time on chain-mail this one struck me as particularly odd so if someone has more information please pass it on.

The first thing which strikes me as completely out of character is for a company like Starbucks to take the time to reply to the British Royal Marines only to get completely personal and say that they don't support anyone in the war. Does that sound like a well-oiled corporate machine which, believe me, Starbucks is? Here is the message:

Recently, British Royal Marines in Iraq wrote to Starbucks because they wanted to let them know how much they liked their coffees, and to request that they send some of it to the troops there. Starbucks replied, telling the Royal Marines thank you for their support of their business, but that Starbucks does not support the war, nor anyone in it, and that they would not send the troops their brand of coffee.

So as not to offend Starbucks, maybe we should support them by NOT buying any of their products! I feel we should get this out in the open. I know this war might not be very popular with some folks, but that doesn't mean we don't  support the boys on the ground, fighting street-to-street and, house-to-house... If you feel the same as I do then please pass this along.

Thanks very much for your support. I know you'll all be there again to support us when we deploy once more.

Sgt. Howard Wright,