On Tuesday, Google and Twitter announced a partnership for renewing the tie up that had come to an end in 2011 and would mean that tweets would again be displayed in search engine results. With this move, Google would be better positioned to offer more real-time results to people through its search queries. It would also benefit Twitter in the way that the social network will be able to boost engagement after undergoing a period of sluggish growth, which has taken a toll on its share price. Jana Messerschmidt, the vice president of Twitter said that they were really excited to partner up with Google in order to bring Tweets in search results.
According to the deal, the search results of mobile web and Google app will first see the change and soon a desktop version would also be introduced. Messerschmidt also added that the feature would become available in some other countries in the upcoming months. She explained how the process would work by giving an example of Taylor Swift. Those interested in knowing what the singer is up to can do a Google search and it would show her recent tweets. Likewise, a search on a TV show would provide people with the most relevant tweets pertaining to it.
There had been a similar arrangement between the two firms, which had been dated back to 2009. However, from 2011, the tweets had not been displayed in Google’s search results. Ardan Arac, the product manager at Google said that this is an excellent way of getting your hands on some real-time information and it provides organizations and Twitter users a way to reach the global audience at the most important times. There is a similar function in the Bing search engine of Microsoft for integrating Twitter messages.
According to some experts, Twitter may not see a boost in its revenue through this deal, but its requirement of displaying tweets graphically may give the social network a greater amount of traffic. However, it should be borne in mind that this isn’t the first time that tweets are coming to Google or that they have been completely removed since 2011. The new deal simply allows for a deeper integration of tweets in the search engine results rather than just putting them in the background where they are rarely seen. The news of the deal has already benefitted Twitter as its stock was a bit higher than usual.
Investors are hoping that Twitter will be able to use this deal for capturing a broader audience and convert the casual onlookers, who stumble upon tweets while browsing or surfing, to become active members. This would help Twitter in competing with other social networks such as Facebook, which have a large user base. Analysts have expressed concerns that Twitter may be able to draw people into clicking on Tweets, but there is also the risk of repelling them away by through desperate pleas of logging in or signing up and they will have to figure out a way to do this subtly.