Google and Twitter Make Deal for Tweets in Search Results
A report out of Bloomberg today reveals that Google and Twitter have shaken hands on a new deal to help new Tweets instantly appear in Google Search results. According to the report, Google has access to “Twitter’s firehose, the stream of data generated by the microblogging service’s 284 million users.” The result will be Tweets showing up in Google Search results immediately after they’ve been posted.
That’s a huge win for both companies. Twitter’s bread and butter – the Tweets generated by its users – will become more accessible by anyone looking for them, meaning greater archiving and searchability for the service, increasing its overall presence and reach on the web, including the reach of its advertisers and brand partners.
Meanwhile, Google now has access to all of Twitter’s users and connections, which includes demographic data, friends and follows, likes and dislikes, general interests – the whole thing. Google is a company that makes works best when it has more access to user data, and with this deal, it just scored the mother lode.
Interestingly, there’s also big potential here for future growth against competitors. Google and Twitter teaming up means that both companies will have a vested interest in the other’s success, which could be bad news for Facebook and Apple. For instance, this could lead to deeper app integration in future iterations of Google’s Android mobile OS. That could give Google more of an edge against Apple’s iOS, while also giving Twitter a leg-up on its own social networking rival.
However, there doesn’t seem to be any attention paid to the way in which Twitter and Google are competitors themselves – specifically in the form of Google+. Perhaps Google has come around to the fact that, well, except for a few pockets of tech-minded folks here and there, Google+ is a relative ghost town compared to Facebook and Twitter. Or, more enticingly, maybe this could be the birth of a burgeoning partnership between Google+ and Twitter, with one becoming more integrated into the other.
That’s pure speculation on my part – chances are good that this partnership won’t amount to much more than what’s already described. But I’d love to see Google and Twitter team up against their rivals for as-yet-unheard-of innovations.
[Source: Bloomberg]