{"id":103373,"date":"2015-02-27T14:31:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/google-to-once-again-drink-from-the-twitter-firehose-2\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:41:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:41:49","slug":"google-to-once-again-drink-from-the-twitter-firehose-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/google-to-once-again-drink-from-the-twitter-firehose-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Google to once again drink from the Twitter firehose:"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the new deal works for both of them, and how brands can make it work for them<\/p>\n

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Image Source: it-scoop.com<\/p><\/div>\n

In early February, Twitter confirmed<\/a> rumours that it would once again offer Google access to a live stream of all of its half a billion daily tweets, something that the tech crowd has taken to referring to as the Twitter firehose. The concept itself isn\u2019t new; the companies had a similar agreement from 2009 to 2011, when talks to renew it broke down. At that time, many believed that Twitter didn\u2019t feel the agreement was working for them, as they questioned how much incremental traffic they were getting and worried about competition from Google\u2019s new Google+ social media property. Needless to say, times have changed. The announcement of the new deal comes at a point when benefits abound for the two tech giants to work together once again, not to mention for brands looking to maximize exposure on both properties.<\/p>\n

How it helps Twitter<\/strong><\/span>
\nMuch of the coverage of this new agreement has legitimately focused on the benefits to Twitter. While Twitter\u2019s earnings nearly doubled and beat expectations for the fourth quarter of 2014, flagging user growth of just 1.4% highlighted the continued plateau of new users discovering the platform. The deal with Google promises a solution to that problem. According to Hitwise, Twitter gets roughly a third of its traffic from Google properties already (including search, Gmail, YouTube and Google+). Feeding a live stream of all tweets for the information-parsers in Mountain View to elegantly deliver to their hordes of information-hungry searchers should certainly introduce even more new people to the magic of Twitter. This extended reach would make Twitter more attractive as a marketing channel, which should generate more revenue. All of that adds up to a major win for Twitter.<\/p>\n

How it helps Google<\/strong><\/span>
\nIt seems like less attention has been paid to how important this deal is for Google. As information on the Internet becomes more decentralised in its delivery, Google has bent its considerable will on indexing, parsing and delivering content at lightning speeds (most notably with its Caffeine update in 2010). By most accounts, these efforts have been wildly successful feats of modern engineering, but social continues to be a thorn in the search giant\u2019s side. Most of the copious reams of data shared daily on Facebook sit behind a walled garden of privacy settings, and the architecture and intense timeliness of a platform like Twitter has always presented challenges to even the most advanced of web crawlers.<\/p>\n

Google has also been searching for years to find ways to weave social signals into its ranking algorithm. After all, its ability to leverage signals from backlinks were what made Google so much better than all of the other search engines in the first place. Links have always been, in effect, a way for users to socialise and call attention to content. As that behaviour has shifted sharply to social channels, Google has been working hard to figure out ways to factor that into its search rankings (many would argue that\u2019s why Google+ exists). Having access to all of these tweets in real time will give Google the opportunity to factor invaluable, timely user behaviour and sentiment into its search rankings. There\u2019s a reason that the money in this partnership will evidently be flowing from Google to Twitter and not the other way around. This is a major win for Google.<\/p>\n

How brands can make this work for them<\/strong><\/span>\n

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