Twitter is having a very happy holiday season. The micro-blogging site is $25 million richer, thanks to deals made with Microsoft and Google to allow its content to be searchable.
According to a BusinessWeek report, Twitter racked in $10 million from Microsoft for the partnership with Bing and $15 million from Google. The deals were struck back in October, but now that real time search results are such a hot topic, the deals are making headlines.
“We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months," Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice-President of Search Products and User Experience, wrote on the Google blog on Oct. 21, after the deals were announced. "The next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."
This landmark deal will ensure that Twitter operates in the black for 2009 and should be a big step in the direction of long-term profitability.
This deal seems a little amiss from Google’s typical stance of not paying to index a Web site. The search engine giant had tough conversations with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, among other properties, earlier this year about site indexing. Microsoft offered to pay to index the newspaper sites, but Google looked for a compromise instead, suggesting limits on free search content.
Google is the number one search engine, performing over 65 percent of all online searches. Bing is the number engine.
Twitter is three years old and is a growing internet and social media phenomenon. The $25 million from Microsoft and Google will ensure Twitter is around for a long time.
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