Twitter homepage refocuses on search. Welcome to the world’s water cooler.

In a need to monetize, Twitter has redesigned its homepage to make search front and center. The simple search box lets you search (duh), and below it is a ticker featuring three rows of popular topics, broken down by minute, day and week. “Popular topics by the minute” take precedence, and appear in a larger point size, indicating the general of-the-moment nature of tweets. Real pulse-of-the-marketplace info, especially if your market has a presence in the Twitterverse.

Paid search is next, folks. Give Twitter a few days (or weeks) to serve up this feature.