Taylor Singletary, a Developer Advocate at Twitter, announced and described the project today in a post on the Twitter API Announcements group.

The Search team is working on a beta project that returns the most popular tweets for a query, rather than only the most recent tweets. This is a beta project, but an important first step to surface the most popular tweets for users searching Twitter.

And later in the post:

Until the popular tweet feature all search results have been sorted chronologically, most recent results at the top. If a search query has any popular results, those will be returned at the top, even if they are older than the other results.

The post offers very specific instructions to developers about how to implement the popular tweets search feature, but gives no indication how Twitter will rank the popularity of tweets. The post also seems to hint that Twitter will make the feature available at search.twitter.com, and not just via its API. But Singletary was non-committal when I asked him (via Twitter, of course) if and when this will happen, saying there’s “no official word on how/when/or if such results will surface on search.twitter.com.”

As Danny Sullivan has pointed out before, offering only the most recent tweets in reply to a search query invites spam and can create a bad user experience. But there are times that a searcher would want the most recent results — think in times of an emergency, or someone looking for current news/information. If Twitter does add “Most Popular” tweets to its search engine, it would be good if users could choose whether they want most recent or most popular.

(found via Mashable, and there’s more discussion on Techmeme)

The news comes in a blog post today that says a browser-based plugin will be available “globally … in the coming weeks.”

Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality.

It’s a smart move for Google to make this available; the company can point to it as needed when defending against accusations from privacy watchdogs. When Google launched its behavioral targeting ads beta last year, it included two opt-out methods — one of which was a browser plug-in — as a proactive response to privacy concerns.

The obvious question is, How many users will actually use this plug-in? Webmasters may be concerned about losing the integrity of their Google Analytics data because it won’t be tracking as many web visitors. But, in reality, a user can already opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics by turning off javascript while surfing the web.

Asked about the impact on web site owners, Google Analytics Group Product Manager Amy Chang sounded unconcerned. “Analytics reports will continue to provide advertisers with robust and valuable data to help improve their websites and advertising campaigns,” she said via email.

• Viacom: Memorandum in support of motion for partial summary judgment (2.7mb PDF)
• Viacom: Statement of undisputed facts (5mb PDF)
• Google: Memorandum in support of motion for summary judgment (500k PDF)

As a refresher, Viacom sued Google in March 2007 for “massive intentional copyright infringement,” claiming that Google allowed thousands of Viacom videos to be posted on YouTube without permission. Google argued that it’s protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects online services from copyright claims over user-posted content.

In a post today on the YouTube blog, the company’s chief counsel goes even further — accusing Viacom of “continuously and secretly” putting its content on YouTube, and “deliberately” making the material look amateur.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Google also claims that Viacom tried to buy YouTube before filing its lawsuit three years ago.

As you’d imagine, there’s plenty of discussion and review of the legal documents online today. Here are a few of the better ones we’ve found:

• AllThingsD: Viacom, YouTube Make Their Case: Read Their Secret Papers Here
• CNET: Viacom, Google air dirty laundry in court docs
• CNBC: YouTube v. Viacom – Inside The Court Documents

There’s also more discussion on Techmeme and on MediaGazer.

What is Google TV? Here’s how the Times describes it:

The Google TV software will present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos or TV shows from Hulu.com. The technology will also allow downloadable Web applications, from games to social networks, to run on the devices.

In many ways, that sounds like what Yahoo announced a year ago with its Yahoo Widget Engine for TVs. But Google’s version also sounds like it may offer more. While Google declined to comment to the Times, the paper cites people “close to the project” who provided these details anonymously:

• the Google TV platform will be open source and based on the Android OS, and developers will be able to build apps for it
• Google has built a set-top box to run this, but the software “may be incorporated directly into TVs and other devices”
• the set-top box is being tested now with Dish Network
• the software will use a version of Google’s Chrome browser
• the project is a partnership between Google, Sony, and Intel, and with Logitech on board to provide peripherals

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was testing a “TV search service.”

Contacted this afternoon about these reports, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “We don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

The PC World article includes some strongly-worded criticisms about how Google launched its Buzz social networking service:

“Google consistently tells the public to ‘just trust us,’” she said. “But based on my observations, I do not believe consumer privacy played any significant role in the release of Buzz.”

A reasonable consumer would conclude that the launch of Buzz was a “material change” their relationship with Google’s Gmail, she said. “When users created Gmail accounts, they signed up for e-mail services,” she said. “Their expectations did not include social networking.”

Negative reaction to Buzz was quick and widespread after its February 9th launch. Google immediately began changing how Buzz works, and eventually issued a public apology that said Google “failed to appreciate that users have differing privacy expectations.”

But Commissioner Harbour also took exception to that approach during today’s FTC privacy workshop.

“I would like to see the commission take the position of intolerance toward companies that push the privacy envelop, then backtrack and modify their offerings after facing consumer and regulator backlash.”

Harbour, whom PC World says is leaving the FTC next month, also spoke critically of Facebook’s long-running privacy issues, and called for online companies to use encryption more often to protect their users personal data.

Just as it does in other settings, the auto-suggest appears as you type a query. But, with some Facebook content and connections behind a wall, the question is, Where will auto-suggest look for suggestions? Here’s Facebook’s explanation:

Now as you’re typing in a query in the search bar, you will instantaneously see results not only of the people, events, groups and Pages you’re connected with but also the connections of your friends and globally relevant results.

So, from my profile page, I get these results as I start to type the word “search.”

Facebook says auto-suggest is rolling out to all users over the next few days.

Last summer, Facebook began to emphasize search more broadly across its site, and its redesign last month put search front and center on the user interface.

It’s also two solid months of growth for Bing after a dip in December. Meanwhile, Google has seen two straight months of falling market share.

Those are Nielsen’s February numbers above. Below is a chart showing Nielsen’s numbers over the past four months.

Lest anyone get too worked up, these numbers show that Bing and Yahoo combined have shown very little growth over the past four months, and Google has shown very little loss of market share over the same period.

Twitter itself has underscored the challenge as far back as March 2009 when it began showing a Suggested Users list to new users. Just a couple months ago, Twitter expanded its suggested users into about 20 categories and made those suggestions available to all users, not just new signups.

Still, whether you’re looking for friends, strangers or companies to follow, it’s never been an easy task. Beyond Twitter’s suggestions, there are search engines, directories, tools, and lists that can help. Here are some of our favorite ways to find the right people to follow on Twitter.

Twitter Lists

Lists are my preferred way to find people to follow. If someone I follow is on a list called, say, “Google Employees,” I can browse the other Twitter users on that list and add them if they look interesting. But that’s the slow, manual way to use lists, and there are a number of tools that make it even easier. I mentioned Twitter’s Suggested Users earlier — it’s the official recommendations divided into about 20 categories.

But you might also try Listorious, a search engine for Twitter Lists. If you’re looking for funny people to follow, maybe to make your morning workout more enjoyable, you can search for [comedy] and get back dozens of Twitter lists related to comedy. If you’re looking to connect with news reporters on Twitter, you can browse the [journalists] tag to see lists of reporters that other Twitter users have created.

Those aren’t your only list-based options. Twibes lets users build topical lists of Twitter users, and then (if I understand correctly) only shows tweets from those users that are specific to the topic. So, if I’m in the “SEO twibe” but send out a tweet about the Seattle Seahawks, it won’t show up in the SEO twibes stream.

Twitter Directories

Wefollow is a combination directory and search engine that you can browse or search by location or topics. The home page shows the most popular tags and cities, but there’s a search form if those aren’t what you’re looking for. Let’s say you’re looking for Twitter users in the tech industry to follow. The [tech] tag shows Twitter users under two tabs — Most Influential and Most Followers.

The Most Folllowers tab is self-explanatory; Most Influential appears to not only reflect follower counts, but also things like how often a user is retweeted.

There are a number of additional Twitter directories that might be good places to find Twitter accounts worth following. Try these:

• Twellow, which bills itself as the “Twitter Yellow Pages”
• ExecTweets, a directory of business executives on Twitter
• TweetFind
• Twitter Moms Network

Twitter Recommendation Engines

Mr. Tweet is a recommendation engine that relies on your contacts’ votes and also offers communities (like a directory) based on topical interests. It’ll show you “friends of friends” and tell you a little about the recommendations, like how many times your friends have retweeted them, how many followers and friends they have, and more.

Mr. Tweet also asks you to give public recommendations of the people you already follow and invites you to tweet about your influence as a Twitter user.

Here are several other Twitter recommendation engines that are worth checking out to find good users for following:

• Who Should I Follow? scans your current list of friends and makes recommendations of users you’re not following that are similar.
• Twiangulate is similar to Who Should I Follow?, but lets you discover who up to three other users follow in common. So, for example, you could use this to see who Danny Sullivan, Barry Schwartz, and Greg Sterling follow on a common basis.
• HiveMind does the same thing, but you can supply up to five users and it’ll tell you who they’re following in common.
• find2follow takes your Twitter username and gives you back a list of recommendations, though there’s no explanation how or why it chooses the accounts you see.

Twitter Search Engines

Tweepi is a new tool that lets you search and browse the followers of other users. Here’s a screenshot showing some of Barry Schwartz’s followers:

It includes a variety of stats about each user, like how often they tweet, how often they reply, how often they get retweeted, and so forth. In that sense, it’s one of the more advanced tools for searching Twitter users who might be worth following. (Thanks to @EricKing for the tip.)

Twitter’s Advanced Search tool offers a variety of ways to slice and dice users and their tweets, but the site also offers a few more specific user search options:

• Twitter’s Account Search helps you find people or companies you know are on Twitter.
• If you’re not sure if someone is already on Twitter, Twitter’s Friend Finder lets you locate contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL who have Twitter accounts.
• If you’re looking for someone who doesn’t have an account, you can invite them via email.

TweepML is a tool that lets you create and share lists of Twitter users, but it also offers a search engine and directory of popular lists, too. @JaredHuber says he does hashtag searches to find users worth following, then he uses TweepML to bulk-follow them.

Finally, HashTweeps lets you search Twitter users by how often they use hashtags.

Local Twitter Users

There are several tools available that make it easy to find Twitter users in your local area (or in any local area).

LocaFollow is probably the most powerful of these local Twitter search engines. You can search four ways at the same time: location, bio, name, and tweet content (i.e., keywords). So, if you’re specifically looking for a doctor in Seattle who’s on Twitter, LocaFollow can give you back a list that matches the “Bio” and “Location” field of Twitter users.

Once you get a set of search results, LocaFollow shows a variety of information about each Twitter user — how long they’ve been a member, their most recent tweet, and their following, follower, and tweet counts. If you sign in via your Twitter account, you can also follow users right from the LocaFollow interface.

ChirpCity and Nearby Tweets are two additional local Twitter search engines. Both search tweets in a given area, and both have additional keyword search options — so you can find people tweeting about “cars” or “movies” in your hometown, for example.

Twitter’s Advanced Search also lets you search for tweets in a given location, and you can combine that with other options like keyword search, usernames, and so forth.

All of these can be powerful tools for a small/local business that’s looking to connect with Twitter users in its hometown.

Final Thoughts

While it may be difficult to find the right users to follow on Twitter, the good thing is that there’s no shortage of tools and web sites that aim to make it easier. I’m sure there are even more than what’s listed above, so if you have a favorite tool, site, or method for finding Twitter users to follow, let us know in the comments — tell us what it is and how you use it most effectively.

According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook.com received 7.07% of all internet visits during the week that ended on March 13th, with Google getting 7.03%.

This compares visits between the two main domains — Facebook.com and Google.com. When this first happened over the holidays, we explained that the numbers don’t include other Google properties like Google News.

In addition to the holiday numbers, Hitwise also says Facebook.com surpassed Google last weekend — March 6th and 7th. With Facebook trending way up in terms of traffic — up 185% over this time last year, Hitwise says, compared to Google.com being up only 9% over last year — it seems likely this is going to happen again and again.

The details seem a bit foggy to me, but it sounds like @anywhere takes many of the Twitter API functions/services and makes them available to web sites in a much simpler way: by adding a few lines of javascript. Some of the mentioned uses of this platform include:

• being able to sign-in to third party web sites with your Twitter ID
• a New York Times journalist’s byline would show her Twitter profile and let anyone follow her from the article on the Times’ web site
• being able to tweet about a video from its YouTube page
• discovering new Twitter users/account from Yahoo’s home page

Those are some of the uses listed in Danny’s liveblog and/or the Twitter blog post, both of which are linked above. DigitalBeat says the platform uses Twitter’s hovercards (pop-up windows) and may include advertising, too.

When @anywhere launches — and I haven’t seen any indication when that’ll be — there will be 13 partner sites, shown here:

I notice that Bing and Yahoo are there, but Google isn’t. Google’s YouTube is a partner, however.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme, too.

Postscript: Yahoo has sent us a statement that explains a little more about its participation in @anywhere. The statement reads, in part: “…we’re excited to support @anywhere, allowing our users to authorize Twitter data sharing with their Yahoo! ID in a way that empowers them to consume their Twitter feeds on Yahoo! and to share Yahoo! content to Twitter.”