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[/responsive]Twitter tweets are about to get more exposure through Google’s search engine, according to Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier, and the results could mean money in the bank for the struggling social channel.
“In the first half of this year, tweets will start to be visible in Google’s search results as soon as they’re posted, thanks to a deal giving the Web company access to Twitter’s firehose, the stream of data generated by the microblogging service’s 284 million users, people with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday,” Frier wrote.
So, what does this mean to Twitter, which has been dealing with a slowing user adoption rate and lack of clear vision in the year since they’ve gone public?
“The renewed relationship benefits both companies,” said JP Morgan’s Doug Anmuth in a message to investors, noting that the deal means “more opportunities for Twitter to convert, and possibly monetize, logged-out users. It will also increase the frequency that people with Twitter accounts check the site, he added.
“For Google, we believe search results will be enhanced by access to real-time tweets and a much broader amount of content,” Anmuth continued.
It remains to be seen if that “broader amount of content” is a good thing for the end user. As to the content itself, Google has said they weight search results in favor of quality journalism, placing a high premium on editorial integrity.
“Google obviously places a high value on content that is free of commercial interest,” D. Eadward Tree noted last fall.
We wonder how this will all fit into the new Google-Twitter algorithm. While Twitter CFO Anthony Noto calls this a “unique opportunity” to distribute tweets to more people, it remains to be seen how these tweets will be weighted in terms of quality.