The stability in the future of search has recently been put into question due to the impact of social media on search. Since people are doing more and more searches on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, does it mean that social media will eventually replace search engines?

Both Twitter and Facebook have launched real-time search engines within their service offerings, and the major search engines are still struggling to enter the real-time search arena. Heather Dougherty, the Research Director at Hitwise, said:

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Twitter experienced a severe outage last week that left the site down for several hours. It was later revealed that the microblogging service was the target of a distributed denial-of-service attack as well as Facebook, LiveJournal, and certain Google websites.

The evidence gathered at this point seems to indicate that the attack has ties to a political controversy. The incident is allegedly linked to the ongoing disputes involving Russia and Georgia.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Twitter launched a new homepage last week. The redesign contains many new features, but the most prominent one, by far, is the search box.

Twitter says the new design is one effort the company is taking to help new users and people unfamiliar with the site better understand what the service offers. Aside from the sleek new color scheme, Twitter's homepage also sports a new slogan. Instead of "What are you doing?" the new company slogan reads "Share and discover what's happening right now, anywhere in the world."

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Popularity: 9% [?]