Google and Microsoft announced today they are working with Twitter to improve the user experience. Both search companies plan to integrate “real-time” tweets into their search results.
Microsoft’s announcement is found on their search blog:
“…today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now). “
Google’s announcement was published several hours later on The Official Google Blog:
“ … 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. “
Currently, there are more questions then answers:
- What if you don’t want real time results? For example, biographical or historical data. Can you exclude Twitter?
- How will Tweets be ranked? Do more followers mean more weight?
- How and when will spammers abuse these new avenues?
- Will there be an adult or censored option?
- Does this mean Facebook Status messages are not far behind?
As I learn more I will keep you posted
November 24th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Definitely a big deal for Twitter, they are making the move from closed by default to more open and they seem to be doing a really good job of it, this is another step in that direction.