This could have been one of the questions Larry or Sergey asked to each other before realising that something was missing from Google’s results pages, a social search feature. Google loves the term "feature" and for every update, bug fix, enhancement or simply any new idea they prefer using the term “this is our new feature”. So in a web that is bombarded by status updates, "i just had a salmon sandwich" breaking news or viral videos that spread faster than the swine flu a new feature was necessary to improve Google’s search results.
Less than 24 hours ago Google announced that they reached an agreement with Twitter to
include their updates in their search results. This comes as no surprise given that Microsoft had already expressed the interest in doing so right after launching their new search engine, Bing. Real-time search results are now a reality (almost since Bing’s Twitter feature is usually accompanied by the message “
Twitter search result are currently unavailable”) and the competition is getting tougher. How will search engines react? Will they manage to capture the value of real time information streams or will we be swamped again with “sandwich updates”?
These latest developments of course put extra pressure to two other big peers, Facebook and businesses. Facebook which is by far the largest social networking platform has been somehow left out of the equation. According to Google, status updates in Facebook are mainly private so they didn’t see any real value there (really?). Companies on the other hand have been stretching so far their budgets to get as much exposure as possible in Facebook, create hundreds of different profiles and groups and spend hours monitoring data analytics and click through rates. Meanwhile Twitter was for them a lunch break activity just to keep them busy. Will the new agreement with Google make all these companies think twice? Maybe...
Early adopters of new technologies and platforms usually run the risk of wasting time and resources for something that doesn’t have any real value. This was so far the case with Twitter since companies did not see any tangible return that will compensate for the time and effort they have invested. Thanks to Google this might very soon change...
