Twitter CEO Elon Musk has set out to improve the site’s search functionality by enlisting the help of prolific hacker and longtime critic George Hotz.
Over a 12-week internship, Hotz promises to “fix” Twitter search and introduce entirely new features, such as: B. the ability to search in liked tweets.
As the first person in the world to jailbreak the iPhone, Hotz is no stranger to bringing new features to existing platforms.
However, what is most notable about Hotz joining Twitter is his previous criticism of Musk, who refused to work for Musk at Tesla, claiming he could develop a better system for self-driving cars.
It seems the two are putting their differences aside out of a shared interest in building a better Twitter search engine.
Hotz volunteered his services in exchange for the cost of living in San Francisco, and Musk seemingly accepted the offer:
Sure, let’s talk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022
This is what Elon told me, my job and I will do my best to do it. I have 12 weeks
Also try to get rid of that unclosable login popup after scrolling a bit, ugh these things ruin the internet https://t.co/vZbSfEqlfW
– George Hotz ? (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
Now Hotz is documenting the path of implementing long-requested features that are commonplace in other search engines.
like what
First, the ability to return relevant results that don’t contain the exact words used in a search query.
TRUE. I tried to search for this exact tweet but typed it a bit and got nothing. Will check if there is an easy way to improve this.
– George Hotz ? (@realGeorgeHotz) November 21, 2022
Additionally, Hotz crowdsources ideas to provide more contextual autocomplete results when users type “from:” in the search box:
I’m not sure if I have the authority to do this, but if a great React programmer/designer would like an internship to help me find it…or someone working @twitter beautiful
I want to type “from:” in the Search Twitter field and have it tokenized and autocomplete.
“from:” shouldn’t be displayed to me @TayFromCA pic.twitter.com/PHuhHg2hMT
– George Hotz ? (@realGeorgeHotz) November 23, 2022
hotz is enthusiastic about removing the login prompt that appears when logged out users scroll through the search results.
After removing the popup, Hotz plans to implement a way for users to search inside liked tweets:
After removing the popup, this is second on my list. If both can be done in the first two weeks, I think we’re on our way to big things.
Planned syntax is “liked_by:HANDLE”, similar to “from:HANDLE” https://t.co/SHG5VH0NtV
– George Hotz ? (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
Hotz also mentioned that Twitter’s advanced search feature should be rolled out faster, although he’s not responsible for UI updates.
Aside from these changes, what Hotz will do to “fix” Twitter search is largely unknown. We’ll likely learn more as the days and weeks progress.
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