Twitter CEO Elon Musk sets his sights on improving the website’s search functionality, enlisting the help of prolific hacker and long-time critic George Hotz.
In the span of a 12-week internship, Hotz promises to “fix” Twitter search and introduce all-new features, such as the ability to search within liked tweets.
As the first person in the world to jailbreak the iPhone, Hotz is no stranger to bringing new capabilities to existing platforms.
However, what’s most notable about Hotz joining Twitter is his prior criticism of Musk, refusing to work for Musk at Tesla, claiming he could develop a better self-driving car system.
It appears the two are putting their differences aside out of a mutual interest in building a better Twitter search engine.
Hotz volunteered his services in exchange for the cost of living in San Francisco, and Musk seemingly took him up on the offer:
Sure, let’s talk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022
that’s what Elon told me my job was, and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks
also trying to get rid of that nondismissable login pop up after you scroll a little bit ugh these things ruin the Internet https://t.co/vZbSfEqlfW
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
Now, Hotz is documenting the journey of implementing long-requested features that are commonplace in other search engines.
Like what?
For one, the ability to deliver relevant results that don’t contain the exact words used in a query.
True. I tried searching for this tweet exactly but spelled it somethig and got nothig. Will look into if there’s some easy way to improve this.
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 21, 2022
Additionally, Hotz is crowdsourcing ideas for delivering more contextual autocomplete results when users type “from:” in the search box:
Not sure I have authority for this, but if amazing React coder/designer wants internship to help me fix search…or someone working @Twitter already
I want to type “from:” in the Search Twitter box and have it tokenize and autocomplete.
“from:” should not show me @TayFromCA pic.twitter.com/PHuhHg2hMT
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 23, 2022
Hotz is enthusiastic about removing the sign-up prompt that appears when logged-out users scroll through search results.
After removing the popup, Hotz plans to implement a way for users to search within liked tweets:
After removing the popup, this is the second thing on my list. If both those can get done in the first two weeks, I think we are on track for great things.
Planned syntax is “liked_by:HANDLE”, similar to “from:HANDLE” https://t.co/SHG5VH0NtV
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
Hotz also mentioned that Twitter’s advanced search feature should be featured more promptly, though he’s not in charge of UI updates.
Beyond those changes, what Hotz will do to “fix” Twitter search is mainly unknown. We’ll likely learn more as the days and weeks go on.
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Featured Image: rblfmr/Shutterstock
