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.

“No one wants a relationship with their mustard.”

Well, exactly. (Unless, it is Col. Mustard, of course, who is endlessly fascinating!)

This odd but spot-on observation was about why big packaged-goods advertisers–who are the really big spenders of the ad business–might be less than interested in leveraging social-media advertising and its promise of deep engagement with consumers.

No one wants to interact over mustard or mayo or ketchup or most products that pay the rent up and down Madison Avenue.

That has not stopped all sorts of social-media companies, from the big ones like Facebook to smaller apps makers, from touting a new and seemingly miraculous kind of advertising attached to their various widgets and interactive products.

To be fair, I do get it on a macro level and also can see the possibilities of the medium, as the idea of truly engaging with consumers has been the holy grail of many marketers.

The problem is, to my mind, that most of the solutions I have seen so far are much more gimmicky and lightweight than innovative and deep.

Whether it be giving out virtual products as gifts or letting users throw them at each other or getting folks to participate in some poll or silly game, none of it feels new and a whole lot of it feels faddish and eventually tiresome.

What is required–because ad agencies and marketers don’t seem to be doing it or, more precisely, doing it well–is for these social-networking companies to come up with either a dead-effective ad solution (as Google (GOOG) has done with its essentially direct-marketing nuclear weapon) or one that leads to an actual purchase or, most of all, one that truly is groundbreaking.

Now, I am not smart enough to think these things up, but it is clear someone has to, as the impact of social ads is still minimal.

Consider the stats from an article (also see the graph below) in The Wall Street Journal today: “In 2007, U.S. marketers spent $600 million advertising on social media, a sliver of the $18 billion spent on interactive advertising that year, according to Forrester Research. The number is forecast to spike to $6.9 billion by 2012.”

This small market is simply not as impressive as the super-sized valuations many of these social-media companies enjoy.

Looking back at a post I did almost a year ago, it feels as if little has changed in a significant enough way.

As I wrote, mocking the notion raised by one widgetmaker that consumers wanted to become “brand ambassadors”:

It seems, though, that the old canard about getting audiences to carry water for brands and loving it has found new life, as social networks and the widgets that live off them search for business models…

But to insist that audiences like to do this, for example, since they seem to enjoy wearing and showing off brands in their clothing and consumer lives, is a story that only a marketer could spin to big-product companies in need of a little love.”

I was debating this very notion of how social-media ads become successful with one social-media entrepreneur by email late last night–yes, this is what passes for fun in my life–who noted correctly that his hugely popular apps “might have enough cultural footprint now to have some staying power, assuming I manage to add depth to it fast enough.”

Now, it seems, we’re on the right track.

Speaking of how to get consumers to have a relationship with their mustard, here is a video of the classic Grey Poupon commercial that could teach Web 2.0 a thing or two or three about marketing: