As I reach my 25th year of life, certain things have become apparent to me. I wouldn’t call them truths, but lessons learned.

I’ve learned that things take time. Gaining skills takes time, earning things takes time. Even learning about yourself is something done over a great deal of time. Sure, you can say, ‘Ahh, but Mo, this is self-evident’, but I disagree.

I have been brought up in the now classic, money-centric, Western culture. An instant-gratification society, where everything is expected to happen ‘now’, as we want it; where battles to earn love, character and material objects are removed in the name of convenience, and hence are diminished in value. However, life has not been so rigid, the natural world doesn’t support it.

I used to think in straight lines, from A to B, courtesy of my upbringing. But like driving a car, the path is never from one goal to another is littered with detours, hazards, traffic. Leap-frogging these challenges, these personal battles, enforces a detrimental frame of mind - I’d call it ‘unwarranted expectation’. When my innate expectations weren’t met, I’d be depressed, confused, rejected and angry.

Time after time, this led to missed opportunities, bad moods and even self loathing, but looking back I’ve learned my lesson. Dropping ridiculous expectations, learning the value of earning and enjoying the journey is far more fulfilling.

In recent months, Twitter has got something of a beating from bloggers worldwide about frequent downtime, feature reductions and timeouts.

Originally, I was dismayed and somewhat (perhaps irrationally) angry at the ongoing Twitter problems, but strangely, and unlike many bad services in the past, I didn’t drop Twitter. It was only after a long think about why I’m still on Twitter.

Then it hit me. I’m on Twitter still because of it’s ease of use, the 3rd party tools around it, and the people I follow that encapsulate my interest. Identi.ca is conceptually just as good, being an open platform, but there’s something not quite as interesting as Twitter about it, and I guess it boils down to the myriad following Twitter has.

Twitter has gained a massive following, from bread and butter users, to businesses, government, and developers. Followers using the service remain closer to the individuals/activist groups/news outlets/brands/companies/bands or whatever else they enjoy. Useful services have been built on it’s API, which although suffering from Twitter’s problems, is robust enough to accommodate development, giving back far more than Twitter itself and adding value to the community.

Think of all the services that revolve around or add to Twitter. There’s Summize (recently acquired by Twitter), Tweetstats, Twitterfeed, amongst many, many others. Through clever use of these tools, businesses can use Twitter to analyze trends online, position themselves appropriately, and hear what people are saying about them.

These points are why people remain on Twitter, not just for the personal frippery, but for the relationships between individuals and business that can and are built on the system. It’s not perfect, but it works. For now.

There has been a lot of criticism dumped on new (formerly ’stealth’) search engine ‘Cuil‘ (pronounced ‘Cool’, meaning ‘Knowledge’ in Irish) with prolific bloggers, analysts and experts the world over giving it an overwhelmingly negative rap.

The Good

Cuil presents search results in a nice, neatly formatted way (perhaps falling short of truly intuitive), with a categorical breakdown of search results, called ‘Drilldowns’. It’s fast, for an index of a claimed 120 billion pages, and as yet is (as far as I can tell) free from ads and sponsored search results. The interface encompasses useful, modern navigation elements such as tabs, and neat AJAX auto-suggest that supplies permutations of common search terms. The in-line thumbnails are potentially a great feature, as they could enable users to find what they’re looking for quicker being a visual aid rather than just text.

The Not So Good

However, where Cuil shines well on the arguably superficial interface standpoint, it falls pretty heavily on what should be (and what they state is) their most important feature. General relevancy.

It may be that I’m simply too used to Google style results being close to what I’m searching for, not always exactly correct, but pretty close. However with Cuil, I’m often presented with a list of results that don’t seem to come close to what I’m searching for, and even the thumbnails that could help me, are quite wrong.

For example, if I enter the term ‘Mount Gambier‘, a specific and unique place, the search results are quite well done, especially the “drilldowns” which ooze good relevancy. I’m given a list of South Australian regions, nearby South Australian towns, cities and wine related links for which the regions around Mount Gambier are known for.

However, if I make my search term more general, lets say ‘monkey‘ the results are very different to what I’d expect. I’m hit with pop-culture references, movies, and mostly strange “drilldowns”. I would be expecting a Google-esque search, which provides me with a link to Wikipedia, telling me what a monkey is. Much better in this case.

My Issue With The Negativity

My problem with it all is the ultimate, and unavoidable comparison between Cuil and Google.  Google began in an age where there wasn’t the sort of instant web we have today. Word didn’t get around as quickly for Google’s problems till far, far later in the game. With Cuil, where scorn could be heaped on and seen by interested parties immediately - instantly and perhaps unfortunately damaging Cuil’s reputation.

I think Cuil’s problems are intrinsically it’s own, but also feel it doesn’t deserve to be written off. It’s specific results with unique-ish terms such as people and places aren’t bad, I’ve definitely got worse from Google and even Yahoo.

Summary

Done right:

• Interface is simple, modern and effective
• Speed is very good
• Large index, theoretically means more results.
• Decent new take on the age old web search
• No ads

Done wrong:

• Search relevance needs work, both in results in general and images returned
• Failure to take into account the effects of social media community rejection across the board
• Failure to undergo extensive (and necessary) staged development (alpha, beta, and consultation with users and tech experts on expected search relevancy)
• Branding is soft, slightly clichéd, Web 2.0 logo that is prone to misspelling
• Perhaps should have purchased Cool.com