According to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, Twitter is talking separately to Google and Microsoft about significant data-mining deals.
“the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.”
Google and Microsoft would index Twitter’s data while paying millions up front and giving Twitter a share of the revenue from search results. Twitter’s billion dollar value is in its 54 million monthly user base and its Real Time Search or ” up-to-the-minute information on the latest news, events and happenings,” as Reuters puts it.
While both Microsoft and Google would benefit from the deal, it doesn’t seem like the strategy we have come to know and love Google for. I could see Google licensing the data exclusively or buying Twitter outright, a tactic that has become a track record throughout their short but explosive history.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is on a roll, doing all the right things lately, splitting from Sympatico.ca, cutting a deal with Yahoo! and launching their new search engine Bing. A deal with Twitter, especially if it is an exclusive deal, would heavily support their momentum in their quest to overtake Google in the search race.
For the end user, I am not so sure this is a good thing. If you are an avid Twitter user, you know that there is a mountain of spam rolling onto your desktop all day. Do we really need to see it in search results?