Twitter has cemented itself as the platform in which the greatest amount of publicly viewable micro-posts (or just posts in general) exist. One cool aspect of this seemingly infinite supply of real-time user content is the ability to search for real-time tweets reacting to a recent event. So while Google can serve as (or attempt to) the search engine for the entire Internet, Twitter can serve as the search engine of worldwide real-time reactions to a current event.

The interesting thing about this amazing functionality is that the use of this search feature is not supported from the home page: www.twitter.com. Here’s what the home page looks like as of today:

Amazingly, there is no search bar at all in the page. Not in a prominent location in the center, nor is it on the header. The only reason one comes to know about the search bar in the first place is via it’s existence on a specific user’s profile page, such as:

So why is Twitter doing this? Some possibilities:

1. Product miss. They don’t know that offering this functionality on their home page would lead to more user engagement and the opportunity to acquire non-users and convert them to new users.

2. They are doing this deliberately. The intention is to point existing users to signing into the home page, and for new users to sign up. These two user actions are critical and having a search bar (large or small) would lead to a distraction for an existing user or for a new user.