Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals
by Kara Swisher
Posted on October 8, 2009 at 12:48 AM PT
Is there gold in them thar tweets?
Maybe so, because–according to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.
Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.
These include a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results.
The deals, stressed sources close to the situation, are nonexclusive, especially because Twitter’s management is keen to remain independent and also nonpartisan in the growing search battle between Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).
This means Yahoo (YHOO)–which recently struck a search-technology and online-advertising partnership with Microsoft–could also license Twitter’s feed to make its search results even more robust, although Boomtown could not determine if the company is in talks with the San Francisco start-up.
Sources said it is also possible that no agreement would be reached with either company.
And execs at Twitter, Microsoft and Google had no comment when asked about talks.
But doing these kinds of data deals with big search players does make a lot of sense, since it would be hard for Twitter to turbocharge its own search engine without running into the big cash-laden guns at both Google and Microsoft, which recently launched its new Bing search service.
Twitter is, instead, seeking to create a large open platform, which many could plug into, from search engines to marketers to publishers to developers.
Twitter has also been considering offering premium services to these groups and is contemplating some form of advertising offering.
But, most of all, Silicon Valley’s hot start-up is focusing now on spurring growth and engagement, along with fine-tuning its product offering.
Being deeply integrated into big search services would give Twitter a huge footprint.
Microsoft had already done a small experiment this past summer integrating Twitter data into search results, starting with tweets of bloggers like me.
How much indexing of its data Twitter will allow is unclear, but the company has certainly bought itself time to think carefully about all its options, given that it now has a lot of money in the bank.
Late last month, Twitter raised another $100 million in new funding, after already having raised $55 million.
This has given it a $1 billion valuation, despite negligible revenue.
The valuation also effectively stated that the innovative company was pretty much putting itself out of play to be acquired and is very interested in forging its own destiny.
Both Google and Microsoft execs have contemplated the idea of buying Twitter in the past, although no serious talks ever moved forward.
If they both strike data deals with Twitter, they will get the next best thing–an ability to offer all the information disseminated on Twitter in search results.
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
Comments
This will go a long way towards merging the worlds of personal communications, and ultimately social (network) activities, networks and communications, with more standard professional communications, as both will show up in search engine rankings.
SEO implications are immense.
In our campaign for Governor of Maine, http://hammer2010.com , we’ve been examining and utilizing beneficially (for our state and interested members) these trends.
Posted by Alex Hammer at October 8th, 2009 at 8:17 amDoes anyone know of any twitter copycats? Cause twitter seems under developed.
1. There is no sort or filter features. Some times I would like to read tweets in chronological order. I feel like I’m playing a button masher trying to get to the first tweet.
2. Where’s the ’show all tweets’ button? I don’t want to click more, hit page down, and click more. It’s just text, they can afford to dish it out.
3. Screw bit.ly, I have no idea what I’m clicking on. Can they make hyperlinks not count in the 140? And whats the crap where you post a link, it says you have 2 characters left, then its shortened and it turns out you had a bunch more space. (well, there is some work around to avoid link-shortening, like “()” or something).
4. Can I change the font? I’m sick of sans-seriff.
5. When someone replies to someone else, why do I have to go to their page and try and figure out what tweet they’re replying to like a detective?
6. Why is there no setting to show the real times? Is being vague a sophisticated technology that makes things more humanlike? FYI twitter, it has said “an hour ago” for the last 20 minutes. Time-zones would help too.
7. I have probably clicked on 50 locked pages. Put an icon of a lock next to their name, so as not to waste my time. Kind of like a “Not a through street” sign.
I would start my own twitter, however I would go psycho just thinking about it.
Posted by Jerry Boyd at October 8th, 2009 at 12:11 pmIt would be interesting to see the effect of search engines on how people tweet.
Posted by Mani Agrawal at October 10th, 2009 at 1:50 pmTwitter is mostly spam and ham (empty self indulgent promotion)
so there is no real value in bringing it to search
google and Microsoft would be foolish to pay anything to promote Twitter at all
Posted by Sam Harrison at October 12th, 2009 at 8:09 pm