Thursday, October 22, 2009

Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter


While we’re still digesting the news of Bing adding Twitter to its search engine, Google has some news of their own: they’re about to do the same exact thing.

The search giant has just announced that they have reached a deal with Twitter to include tweets in search results.

From the Google blog:

“Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

In other words, so much for Bing getting the upper hand in the battle for real-time search. Absent from Google’s announcement, however, is Facebook. That said, the vast majority of status updates on Facebook are not public, so how much of an advantage that will be to Bing is dependent largely on how Facebook is able to change user behavior.

For Twitter though, today marks significant validation of its business. Just two weeks ago, it was rumored that the company was working on search deals worth “several millions dollars,” and today, they delivered, by partnering with the two biggest players in the game. With a fresh $100 million in the bank and both Google and Microsoft implementing tweets in search, it looks like Twitter() is in it for the long haul.

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