Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, admitted today that the company has been losing out to Twitter in the race to meet web user’s demand for real-time information.

Interesting to see Google concede this sort of thing, for starters, but also that, in light of recent events, it’s very difficult to assert what Twitter is at this point. Or more, what Twitter think Twitter is, and what they want it to be.

At the heart of it lies this whole change-to-replies nonsense, which I’ll avert ranting further about now because I’ve done it near to death in varying capacities, but I do see an interesting conflict:

On the one hand, you have Google feeling that they’re not competing for real-time information discovery, whilst at the same time Twitter have changed their functionality to favour the people posting lower value, less relevant content in conversations. People are no-longer encouraged to make standalone points within replies, as their distribution is restricted (albeit leakily).

On the face of it, this seems like a social adjustment that would hurt Twitter’s value as a source of information. But, a tweet from Ev is congratulatory of people changing their social behaviour in response to the new replies feature. There’s a grander plan somewhere, and whether this change really has any correlation with what they want their site to be is anyone’s guess (despite their talk of social engineering, they’ve previously admitted it’s actually a technical issue.)

I find the conflicted perceptions of what Twitter is/should be, especially from big player rival companies, quite interesting. It seems entirely possible at this point for someone to set themselves up to compete with Twitter, only to find Twitter moving in a different, unrelated and unexpected direction altogether.

Ah, speculation.

Google falling behind Twitter, admits chief. Via: Guardian.