Be that as it may, Twitter just launched a redesigned homepage a few minutes ago, and it features search and topic trending front and center.  As I just tweeted, if there was any doubt about the direction Twitter might be headed as a company, I think the new design clears that right up.

Regular Twitter watchers should not find this surprising. Frankly, I think it makes a ton of sense. Real-time search is the new black here Silicon Valley, and Twitter is uniquely positioned to do something interesting in this space. Of course, the challenges are still great, because simply searching what people are saying or doing in real time doesn’t solve the problem of relevance, context or accuracy.

I’ve long been interested in both social search (e.g. mining one’s network for data) and real-time search, and I’m really excited to see what Twitter has up its sleeves.

P.S. Perhaps fittingly, it was launched on @Ev and @Sara’s anniversary. Hooray for new beginnings!

In other news, death to IE!