Twitter Search - Reconquering the 3rd party turf?

Interesting article about Twitter Search on the Twitterblog today:

We had the search box way up near the top of the page and the results on a separate page. It turns out that's not the awesome way to do it. The best way to experience Twitter Search is when it's a natural part of your normal Twitter experience.

I suspect they knew that for quite a while, its probably been execution cycle shortage that it hasn't happened sooner - but the interesting bit is this:

We've added a few other features to this design. If there's a search you want to do on a regular basis, you can "save" the search. That will place the word or term permanently in your sidebar for easy access. So if you want to know what people are saying about the city you live in, the products you use, or just something weird, it becomes a link on your home page.

Twitter Search is an engine for discovering what is happening right now but it doesn't always have to be a box and a button. Trends are words or phrases being referenced with more frequency suggesting that something interesting might be happening. When you click on a trend link, you can read the tweets and find out what's up. Trends is in beta—but it has potential.

So, not just real time search and store but also using analysis of the metadata to surface useful trends etc.

This is very interesting because its starting to ramp up into territory previously occupied by the 3rd party plays such as Tweetdeck etc, which have had on-page search awhile, and the metadata-crunching services that have started to proliferate. Not entirely unexpected, but interestin nonetheless.

And why?

We would hypothesise its to get users back to using a Twitter managed client as the main point of call, as that is the only way they will be able to serve their Ads, and a better way of getting users to also use their other services as they emerge.

Interesting times in the Twitterverse we suspect......