Situations in which nothing beats Twitter, yet: Part 1

I've been tweeting quite frequently over the last couple of days. And I've also been using Twitter's search feature quite often - to gauge the pulse of the public on particular topics. I've been trying to understand the types of situations in which Twitter (and Twitter-like services) are more useful than traditional services such as Google's search, as well as situations in which Twitter, et al., are most useful, compared to any other service.

In part 1 of this hopefully multi-part series of posts, I'm describing a simple situation in which Twitter helped me to verify my doubt/feeling/observation quite effortlessly. Interestingly, I couldn't think of any other easier/faster/simpler way to do this.

1. I visited a blog post on the website of Los Angeles Times
2. I felt as if the website has been redesigned, since the last time I visited it
3. To verify this feeling, I headed to Twitter and queried latimes redesign
   
4. Twitter's results instantly showed me that other people too had observed the site's redesign, thus verifying my feeling
5. Being a regular reader of NYT's website, I also felt that the new LA Times website looked somewhat similar to NYT's website
6. I quickly queried latimes redesign nytimes on Twitter
7. Twitter's results instantly showed me that other people too had felt that the new design of the LA Times website looked like it had been copied from NYT's website, thus verifying my feeling

I've placed screenshots of this situation here. Viewing them should provide clearer understanding of what I'm trying to state in this post.

How does one do this on Google? I don't see any way currently...