Twitter announced on, of all places, Twitter yesterday that they are bringing new filters to the desktop version of their social network:
We’re bringing new filters to search on http://t.co/eNvqKTup1d: by videos, news, people you follow, and more. pic.twitter.com/vkxfkNf2ou
— Twitter (@twitter) January 29, 2014
Depending on what you’re looking for, you can easily restrict your searches to show only photos, videos, or news, just like you can on Google. You can also restrict searches to show only results from people you follow, and my personal favorite: people that are near you.
This is my favorite because I think it has many practical uses for local businesses. Let’s say you own a restaurant and it’s around lunch time, you can search for “lunch” and filter the results by people nearby to see everyone around you who is talking about lunch.
That’s where you can swoop in! If you find someone saying something like “Hmm, what should I have for lunch today? I feel like I’ve had everything this week.” You could respond with: “Hey! Why not give us a try? Drop in today and we’ll give you a 10% discount.” And there you go, you’ve got a new customer in the door.
You can apply that scenario to just about any other kind of local business. If someone nearby is looking for a recommendation and you have what they’re looking for, go ahead and make a customer out of them.
Of course there are plenty of fun uses too. Like when everyone is live tweeting the Academy Awards and you just want to see pictures of what everyone’s wearing. How will you use Twitter’s new search filters? Let me know in the comments!
