Very soon (within the next couple of weeks) you will be able to search tweets (the message a person on Twitter sends aka an ‘update’) on Twitter. I for one was very excited when I saw the search box appear on the right hand side nav of Twitter a few weeks ago, only to find out that it was just to search user profiles. Searching of actual content within Twitter will be very welcomed.

You’ll also supposedly be able to get custom alerts based on certain search terms. Says Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey [via TechCrunch]:

“Type in a keyword or keywords and any time a Twitter is created that includes those keywords, you’ll be notified via IM or SMS.”

The ability to search all of Twitter for certain words or phrases will no doubt require a major upgrade and I fear could slow the service to a crawl again (it’s been very fast in recent months), but it’s a necessary upgrade as the company tries to distinguish itself from Pownce and the like.

Just a few days ago I posted my 1,000th tweet (well behind Robert Scoble’s 3,602 updates) and I still definitely am finding the service both interesting and useful – searching will just make it that much better.