TechCrunch’s report last night that Google was “in late stage negotiations” to acquire Twitter may have whet the appetites of technology watchers but is apparently not accurate according to Kara Swisher.
Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in “some product-related discussions,” according to one source, around real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service.
While the rumor of an acquisition may not be true it’s still interesting to note that they did have a conversation and more importantly on real time search. In a recent post I cited an example where I needed some info on a HP scanner/printer and without thinking twice I went straight into Twitter - instead of googling it - and searched for the topic. Searching on Twitter is rapidly gaining traction and people are beginning to realize that Twitter is a good source for information. As more and more people talk about brand names and the increasing presence of companies and organizations on Twitter it’s time to think of Twitter as a search engine and not just a micro-blogging tool. Real time tweets like peoples experiences with products and services are gathered and mined by Twitter. When breaking news happens people interact in real time and that becomes searchable.
I’m not at all surprised that Google is interested in real-time search, something it doesn’t have at the moment. It’s not out the realm of possibility IMO, that in the very near future we may see a tiny Twitter logo underneath some of our google search results!
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I think Twitter was using the incident to get some more users. Their growth is still not as comparable as that of Facebook.