Twitter and real-time searching

So, with the indexing of Tweeted links recently announced by Twitter, allowing the service to act in a similar, yet smaller, way to Google what does this all mean for the casual and commercial Tweeter?

With real-time searching the user is able to, up to the second, search for trends in Tweets (and soon links) that are being shared and exchanged across the world. This could open up firms to a potentially lucrative market, adding key words in to their Tweets so as to reach out to a larger audience and creating more followers.

In terms of real-time searching, I think that Twitter is setting itself up to become profitable. With searches bringing up results carrying external links to millions of web pages, ads can be placed next to the results and solve today's burning question: Can Twitter make money?

Trends relating to search data are becoming more important these days. We want to know what people are searching for and thinking about now - which is what Twitter hopes to be able to capture. It will be interesting to see if their strategy pays off and with their initial base of followers, can they harness a share of an already dominated market.

More on this as it develops.