Update: Bing has now made the announcments and Google has announced a deal with Twitter too. Google’s Marissa Mayer writes:
…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.
Original Article: Microsoft is expected to announce two separate deals today – one with Twitter and one with Facebook. From the sound of it, the deals would be similar in nature, both giving Bing access to index status updates from both social networks.
Kara Swisher at Boomtown says that both deals are confirmed and are expected to be announced this afternoon at the Web 2.0 summit. The deals are non-exclusive, however. And you know what that means.
Google has been reported to have been talking with both Twitter and Facebook too, and it would be no surprise to see deals made there as well.
But this is Microsoft’s moment. But what will it mean as far as status updates from both Twitter and Facebook?
“Much of what is posted on Twitter is public by design, while Facebook’s users prefer the closed nature of the service to disperse a wide variety of personal information only to their friends and they want to control it,” says Swisher. “Thus, sources said, not all Facebook updates will be included in the real-time feed to be searched by Bing, but only those its users choose to make available to the wider public. Facebook will apparently provide users with a numbers of new tools to do so.”
According to Swisher, neither of Microsoft’s deals will bear fruit for several weeks, and that would leave plenty of time for Google to sneak in with its own deals. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
As for the financial details of Microsoft’s deals with Twitter and Facebook, these can only be speculated upon at this point.
