Google Real-Time Tweet Search Identifies the Tech Elite

Want to know if you’re truly in the technology elite? Let Google tell you!

Try this:

• Go to Google
• Type in your name and the word ‘twitter’ (e.g. hutch carpenter twitter)
• Look at the results

If you see real-time search results at the top of the page, congratulations! You’re a VIP! If not, well, sorry about that.

As was well covered a few months back, Google has made a deal with Twitter to get the real-time firehose of tweets. The actual rollout of tweets in search by Google is still a work in progress.

But I stumbled across this interesting test of Tech Worthiness in doing research for a different blog post. Some searches result in a display of real-time tweets at the top of the page. What’s interesting is who gets this treatment.

The graphic below shows the Google search results for six different people, along with the word “twitter”:

At the top, you can see four people who are elite. They have real-time tweet searches right at the top of the search results:

• Louis Gray – uber chronicler of Silicon Valley and Web 2.0
• Charlene Li – ex-Forrester analyst, co-author of Groundswell, founder of Altimeter Group
• Chris Messina – leader of the OpenID effort
• Jeff Bezos – founder, CEO of Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos is interesting. He does have a twitter account, but they’re all protected tweets.

At the bottom, you see a couple of the non-elite in the tech world. Ashton Kutcher, the first man to the moon…er…to reach 1 million followers on Twitter does not get the real-time tweet treatment from Google.

And alas, I am not part of the tech elite either.

(Cross-posted @ I’m Not Actually a Geek)