i seem to get embroiled in odd debates. They're mostly self inflicted though, so don't feel too bad.
Recently, i was having a discussion about Twitter as a search engine. If you live in Santa Clara Valley (or the surrounding environs) you have my sympathy. Mostly because you've been squarely beaten about the head and shoulders about how awesome Twitter's search is and how Google needs to "catch up" with "real time search".
Mind you, there's some truth to that. As events occur, people talk about them, sometimes incessantly. Given the vast numbers, it's conceivable that some are talking eloquently about it and producing useful commentary. That's still a lot of monkeys to get through.
Plus, it's (currently at least) a gameable system. Possibly more so than traditional search engines because sites have to react to spam faster, and it's far easier to hook folks who are simply looking for content among the comment. (i remember looking at the #startrek tag when the new movie was out and it being absolutely swarmed by spammers.)
For topics of the moment (like stuff happening right now) Twitter is probably a fairly good resource, and good for them. For looking up the how to return a buffer from a curl() call, or a recipe for apple sauce chocolate cake, less so.
Guess i'm more a fan of real use cases rather than how cool something could be.
