7 ms·

Twitter Confirms New Google Firehose Deal

144 points by will_brown 12y ago

jarcoal 12y ago
I wasn't a huge fan of seeing them in the SERPs back in the day; hopefully Google has an opt-out. I wouldn't mind if somehow it was integrated into Google News; that could be cool.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  The signal (actual news) to noise (opinions, comments, satire) is very high so adding Twitter to news is probably not a good idea.
  - jaredsohn 12y ago
    I think you mean "very low"
    - sparkzilla 12y ago
      Yup. I meant "extremely low"
- myko 12y ago
  I feel the complete opposite - I used to Google for specific tweets I remembered seeing and to help find tweets relating to current events. Google was much better about showing me the stuff I wanted to see than the actual Twitter site! I'm really excited to have this back.
  - codingdave 12y ago
    .. which is exactly why an opt-out would be a good solution. People can see what they want, and rbing in tweets when/if appropriate.
    - ramidarigaz 12y ago
      Worst case, I bet someone will make a chrome plugin to purge twitter results from search.
- asuffield 12y ago
  Does -site:twitter.com count as an "opt-out"?
- Nicholas_C 12y ago
  >I wouldn't mind if somehow it was integrated into Google News; that could be cool. I've wanted to build a site that mixes news feeds with tweets about said news. Some news sites have weak twitter streams to the side but it would be cool to have something more immersive.
  - mcintyre1994 12y ago
    You might find reddit live interesting, it does a pretty good job of this imo. For example, https://www.reddit.com/live/u9z0oa5c4jud/ https://www.reddit.com/live/u9z0oa5c4jud/ and http://www.reddit.com/live/u7qtz12ybb74 http://www.reddit.com/live/u7qtz12ybb74 Together with being crowd sourced it's a really fresh take on breaking news.
- ProAm 12y ago
  Its going to be heavily censored anyway, Twitter has an excessive amount of trolls, harassment and negative tweets in regards to any major social news event. There is no way Google will let that hit the search results.
- jpalomaki 12y ago
  Wonder what is more valuable: showing tweets along the search results or being able to use them to rank other search results? Especially for stuff that is happening right now, tweets probably contain pretty good information on what are the most relevant sources of information. And since the text part is show short, it is easier to match what this tweet is related to.
rrggrr 12y ago
That crash you heard today was the real-time data door slamming shut on Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Say what you might about Twitter's slowing growth, but mainstream news cycles and breaking news are increasingly preceded by and/or quote tweets. Where are Google's competitors going to turn to deliver similar real time results? PR Newswire? Associated Press? Reuters? Huge win for Google who needed this and big oversight on the part of Facebook IMHO.
- austenallred 12y ago
  I talk with the Google News Labs team on occasion (it's a brand new team, which should tell you something), and I can safely say there's a race going on in real time news (My company is building a real-time crowdsourced newsroom - https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com). My guess is there will be some major acquisitions taking place in the real-time news space this year. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are all realizing it's going to be a landgrab. If nothing else it's fun and exciting.
  - sparkzilla 12y ago
    >it's a brand new team, which should tell you something What does that tell you? I'm not sure if it's good or bad. Having seen a few attempts at crowdsourced newsrooms (infobitt, Inside.com, the earlier version of Grasswire) I don't see how they compete with Twitter. At best they filter Twitter and are in competition with Google News. That said, I'm also in that space with Newslines a crowdsourced news archive (http://newslines.org http://newslines.org) so the idea of a hot news acquisition market is all to the good.
    - austenallred 12y ago
      It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. And to be clear: We don't compete with Twitter - we're a layer of data on top of the raw twitter/youtube/etc data that makes them more valuable. Infobitt and Inside.com are vaguely in the breaking news space, but that's about as far as the similarities go.
nubbee 12y ago
Twitter is going to redirect users to a "logged out" page if they click on a tweet in search results and are not already logged in. How's that not cloaking and against google' own guidelines?[1] Google wants to index tweets and Twitter wants to nip their growth stagnation in the butt. Two, otherwise fine companies, came to this half-arsed compromise that's solely based on fear of missing out rather than creating something that serves users. Or am I being too harsh here? [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604723?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604723?hl=en
- blfr 12y ago
  The logged-out page will presumably include the tweet shown in the search results in addition to ads and the sign-up nudge/nag.
- will_brown 12y ago
  This was actually my first thought...Google users clicking a result and not seeing the tweet? Twitter wanting to capture users, but making a users first impression of the service as a bait(content) and switch(create account) right from Google results? Maybe the way its executed it won't be a big deal. Maybe the entire tweet is available in the Google results, or the log in screen will not obscure the tweet. As to the cloaking issue, Google is entering a "partnership" so Twitter is not subject to the standard rules.
- bobbles 12y ago
  Well if 100% of the content of the tweet is listed as a search result, are you losing anything without having a twitter account?
  - firebones 12y ago
    You'd lose the thread of @replies and conversation, and perhaps any embedded media in the tweet. You still wouldn't need an account, but you'd have to visit the site.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  I've found twitter is a terrible company for this - I get booted to a twitter login screen for way too many Twitter links online on my phone. Ironically I actually use the twitter app, I'm just not logged in in the web browser.
whatcd 12y ago
Looks like I don't have to use search.twitter.com to get the latest. Win-Win for both companies!
- CreativePro 12y ago
  now if they only removed google plus from youtube
taybin 12y ago
Ugh. I avoid twitter like the plague already. Luckily it'll be easy to ignore in the results.
guelo 12y ago
During the Gaza war last summer Israel propaganda figured out how to get their inflamatory Google+ content below every Gaza news story. I wonder how Twitter will be different. Who picks the highlighted tweets?
guelo 12y ago
Google+ content in news has not worked out very well[1], I wonder how Twitter will be different. [1] During the Gaza war last summer Israel propaganda figured out how to get their Plus content below every Gaza news story.
simula67 12y ago
I remember Google had this deal before and they chose to end it [1] around the time it launched Google+. Seems like they have thrown in the towel on social :) [1] http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-google-realtime-search-goes-offline-84175 http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-goo...
- ars 12y ago
  > Seems like they have thrown in the towel on social :) They shouldn't. Anecdotally I've found that young kids seem to prefer google+ over facebook. Mainly because you can control exactly who you share what with by using circles, and because parents are uneasy about letting kids go on social media (facebook), but email is an easier sell (gmail) and once you have gmail google+ is not far away.
jzwinck 12y ago
The quote at the end is almost certainly taken out of context: > We found that 89% of Twitter users are cricket fans, they follow cricket in some way—either they follow sports, people or teams. That came from someone in India, who surely was referring to Twitter users in India. Globally, I doubt 89% of Twitter users could name a single cricket player, team, event, venue, or rule. It's interesting how authoritative-sounding people (here, the "managing director for Twitter") can have their words used in ways that are definitely not true yet appear on the surface to be sensible.
- caseyf7 12y ago
  Although it may be due to the incredibly high number of fake Twitter accounts generated in India.
known 12y ago
Does Google have a similar deal with Amazon?

144 points by will_brown 12y ago

I wasn't a huge fan of seeing them in the SERPs back in the day; hopefully Google has an opt-out. I wouldn't mind if somehow it was integrated into Google News; that could be cool.

sparkzilla 12y ago
The signal (actual news) to noise (opinions, comments, satire) is very high so adding Twitter to news is probably not a good idea.
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  I think you mean "very low"
  - sparkzilla 12y ago
    Yup. I meant "extremely low"
myko 12y ago
I feel the complete opposite - I used to Google for specific tweets I remembered seeing and to help find tweets relating to current events. Google was much better about showing me the stuff I wanted to see than the actual Twitter site! I'm really excited to have this back.
- codingdave 12y ago
  .. which is exactly why an opt-out would be a good solution. People can see what they want, and rbing in tweets when/if appropriate.
  - ramidarigaz 12y ago
    Worst case, I bet someone will make a chrome plugin to purge twitter results from search.
asuffield 12y ago
Does -site:twitter.com count as an "opt-out"?
Nicholas_C 12y ago
>I wouldn't mind if somehow it was integrated into Google News; that could be cool. I've wanted to build a site that mixes news feeds with tweets about said news. Some news sites have weak twitter streams to the side but it would be cool to have something more immersive.
- mcintyre1994 12y ago
  You might find reddit live interesting, it does a pretty good job of this imo. For example, https://www.reddit.com/live/u9z0oa5c4jud/ https://www.reddit.com/live/u9z0oa5c4jud/ and http://www.reddit.com/live/u7qtz12ybb74 http://www.reddit.com/live/u7qtz12ybb74 Together with being crowd sourced it's a really fresh take on breaking news.
ProAm 12y ago
Its going to be heavily censored anyway, Twitter has an excessive amount of trolls, harassment and negative tweets in regards to any major social news event. There is no way Google will let that hit the search results.
jpalomaki 12y ago
Wonder what is more valuable: showing tweets along the search results or being able to use them to rank other search results? Especially for stuff that is happening right now, tweets probably contain pretty good information on what are the most relevant sources of information. And since the text part is show short, it is easier to match what this tweet is related to.

rrggrr 12y ago

That crash you heard today was the real-time data door slamming shut on Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Say what you might about Twitter's slowing growth, but mainstream news cycles and breaking news are increasingly preceded by and/or quote tweets. Where are Google's competitors going to turn to deliver similar real time results? PR Newswire? Associated Press? Reuters? Huge win for Google who needed this and big oversight on the part of Facebook IMHO.

austenallred 12y ago
I talk with the Google News Labs team on occasion (it's a brand new team, which should tell you something), and I can safely say there's a race going on in real time news (My company is building a real-time crowdsourced newsroom - https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com). My guess is there will be some major acquisitions taking place in the real-time news space this year. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are all realizing it's going to be a landgrab. If nothing else it's fun and exciting.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  >it's a brand new team, which should tell you something What does that tell you? I'm not sure if it's good or bad. Having seen a few attempts at crowdsourced newsrooms (infobitt, Inside.com, the earlier version of Grasswire) I don't see how they compete with Twitter. At best they filter Twitter and are in competition with Google News. That said, I'm also in that space with Newslines a crowdsourced news archive (http://newslines.org http://newslines.org) so the idea of a hot news acquisition market is all to the good.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. And to be clear: We don't compete with Twitter - we're a layer of data on top of the raw twitter/youtube/etc data that makes them more valuable. Infobitt and Inside.com are vaguely in the breaking news space, but that's about as far as the similarities go.

nubbee 12y ago

Twitter is going to redirect users to a "logged out" page if they click on a tweet in search results and are not already logged in. How's that not cloaking and against google' own guidelines?[1] Google wants to index tweets and Twitter wants to nip their growth stagnation in the butt. Two, otherwise fine companies, came to this half-arsed compromise that's solely based on fear of missing out rather than creating something that serves users. Or am I being too harsh here? [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604723?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604723?hl=en

blfr 12y ago
The logged-out page will presumably include the tweet shown in the search results in addition to ads and the sign-up nudge/nag.
will_brown 12y ago
This was actually my first thought...Google users clicking a result and not seeing the tweet? Twitter wanting to capture users, but making a users first impression of the service as a bait(content) and switch(create account) right from Google results? Maybe the way its executed it won't be a big deal. Maybe the entire tweet is available in the Google results, or the log in screen will not obscure the tweet. As to the cloaking issue, Google is entering a "partnership" so Twitter is not subject to the standard rules.
bobbles 12y ago
Well if 100% of the content of the tweet is listed as a search result, are you losing anything without having a twitter account?
- firebones 12y ago
  You'd lose the thread of @replies and conversation, and perhaps any embedded media in the tweet. You still wouldn't need an account, but you'd have to visit the site.
Pxtl 12y ago
I've found twitter is a terrible company for this - I get booted to a twitter login screen for way too many Twitter links online on my phone. Ironically I actually use the twitter app, I'm just not logged in in the web browser.

whatcd 12y ago

Looks like I don't have to use search.twitter.com to get the latest. Win-Win for both companies!

CreativePro 12y ago
now if they only removed google plus from youtube

taybin 12y ago

Ugh. I avoid twitter like the plague already. Luckily it'll be easy to ignore in the results.

guelo 12y ago

During the Gaza war last summer Israel propaganda figured out how to get their inflamatory Google+ content below every Gaza news story. I wonder how Twitter will be different. Who picks the highlighted tweets?

guelo 12y ago

Google+ content in news has not worked out very well[1], I wonder how Twitter will be different. [1] During the Gaza war last summer Israel propaganda figured out how to get their Plus content below every Gaza news story.

simula67 12y ago

I remember Google had this deal before and they chose to end it [1] around the time it launched Google+. Seems like they have thrown in the towel on social :) [1] http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-google-realtime-search-goes-offline-84175 http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-goo...

ars 12y ago
> Seems like they have thrown in the towel on social :) They shouldn't. Anecdotally I've found that young kids seem to prefer google+ over facebook. Mainly because you can control exactly who you share what with by using circles, and because parents are uneasy about letting kids go on social media (facebook), but email is an easier sell (gmail) and once you have gmail google+ is not far away.

jzwinck 12y ago

The quote at the end is almost certainly taken out of context: > We found that 89% of Twitter users are cricket fans, they follow cricket in some way—either they follow sports, people or teams. That came from someone in India, who surely was referring to Twitter users in India. Globally, I doubt 89% of Twitter users could name a single cricket player, team, event, venue, or rule. It's interesting how authoritative-sounding people (here, the "managing director for Twitter") can have their words used in ways that are definitely not true yet appear on the surface to be sensible.

caseyf7 12y ago
Although it may be due to the incredibly high number of fake Twitter accounts generated in India.

known 12y ago

Does Google have a similar deal with Amazon?