• TechCrunch, Friday, May 1, 2009 1:15 PM

Twitter has rolled out a new interface that features "Trending Topics" in addition to real-time search on its main page. Trending Topics keeps track of hot items people are searching for right now on Twitter. As you can imagine, "swine flu" is currently the No. 1 topic. A new feature also allows users to save searches so they can update results in real-time.

In a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said, "Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search. With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important -- a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now." As TechCrunch's MG Siegler notes, Twitter has always been useful as a source for real-time trends and information, but now with Search and Trending Topics on the main page, "both are more powerful than they've ever been." It's also very simple and it looks good, Siegler says, but if for some reason you don't like either feature, you can collapse them both.

It remains to be seen how the move will affect third-parties that have built services on top of the Twitter platform, but hardcore users will no doubt be tempted to use the site even more now.

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