Twitter search has a FriendFeed-like boost that will enhance its usefulness while providing context: you can see a “conversation”. This enhancement suggests Twitter isn’t going to roll over and play dead even though Google and Microsoft are elbowing their way into real-time search. It also shows us how many Tweets are one-offs (not conversations), but that’s another story.

Here’s a screen capture of an expanded conversation between Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Laurent (@imau):

Conversations are toggled – open/close – by clicking a cartoon-like “talk” bubble. The result looks a little like a FriendFeed conversation:

Although this conversation toggle seems to appear only in search (for now), extending it to your home page would be a logical follow-on.

What’s next? A ‘like’ button?

This post first appeared at WiredPen.

Note: Two commenters suggest this feature is not “new.” Monday was the first time I saw this option, and I’ve conducted a lot of Twitter searches via the web interface. However, the web is not my primary tool on the desktop — that’s Tweetdeck, followed by Seesmic — so it is possible that the feature precluded the real-time search war.