"The conventional thinking now is that Twitter’s search will spell trouble for Google. I believe that it will be Google that will be the first to filter tweets and deliver useful, relevant results sets. This seems so obvious yet I have not seen anyone write about it yet. Maybe the Twitterati is high on their own supply." - AJ Kohn from Bookmarklet

This is why a Twitter acquisition for Google makes sense. It will help them improve their core business: Search. Already, there's talk that regular "PageRank" (based on incoming links from other websites) is getting less relevant because lots of linking to content now happens on Twitter, instead of on blogs. - Meryn Stol

Twitter can do far more for Google than Youtube (acquired for 4 billion USD I believe) has ever could. Plus, bandwidth costs are far less. And no copyright issues. - Meryn Stol

This makes sense, although i don't see what "realtime" has to do with it. Someone will have to explain that one to me one day. - Rahsheen the Dream

Rahsheen, tweets and retweets about an article could help "rank" a new blog post in under a minute. That means Google search results about news could be really fresh. - Meryn Stol

In itself, the social graph of Twitter makes a great complement to current pagerank. People followed by - say - Tim O'Reilly are probably interesting. This is not about mere popularity, but about where the "follows" are coming from. Just like how pagerank is built. - Meryn Stol

I don't think an acquisition would happen because Google really doesn't need Twitter - nor real-time search IMO. (And there's no revenue either.) It would be a supplemental (onebox) addition to SERPs. Tweets is the crawl at the bottom of a news channel. Google solves the relevancy, authority and duplication problem already. - AJ Kohn

Can't twitter block Google's ability to generate a realtime index of tweets? They own the network after all... - Daniel J. Pritchett

AJ, people are turning to Twitter search for real-time coverage of events more and more. I believe Google wants to "own" search. They want their search box to be THE search box. And actually, I would like that too. It's in the top-right corner of my browser. I don't want another search box for Twitter there! - Meryn Stol

Daniel, that's exactly why they should buy them out. :) - Meryn Stol

I say, 1 billion. I wonder if they'd sell for that. The 500M offer from Facebook was clearly too low. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Does the PageRank bit make sense? A bunch of RTs with links in it is really a lot like spam. And the authority bit isn't solved there either, is it? - AJ Kohn

"A bunch of RTs with links in it is really a lot like spam." not if you consider the social graph in which all these tweets are embedded. You need to know the "authority" of each user. If - say - Tim O'Reilly tweets about something, it means something. It's not trivial. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: I've written about the shortcomings of Twitter search. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/twitter... Frankly, it has very limited breadth IMO. Breaking news and maybe local make sense ... and the former is ephemeral and shouldn't disrupt long-term ranking on terms. - AJ Kohn

"shouldn't disrupt long-term ranking on terms" I wasn't saying that. I said that it could help real-time / short-term ranking. Google is behind on that now, and they can't afford to. They need to own search, almost literally. Google "equals" search. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Yes, but what I'm saying is that breaking news is often not really search. Think of it this way. Steve Jobs would be dead many times over if we used Tweets as the authority. Google strives for the 'best' results for a query. They don't want to have the obit for Steve Jobs as a top result. Supplemental results makes sense to me ... but paying and arm and a leg for that? I just don't see that happening. - AJ Kohn

I agree with you that Twitter search in its current iteration has many shortcomings. But that's logical, because Twitter has lousy engineers. Google has the pro's. They know search, ranking, and a bit of semantic analysis (although they're not the strongest on that). Twitter is a goldmine for a company with proper engineers - Google. - Meryn Stol

If Google doesn't go into real-time / social search, they might very well not be my search box in Firefox in 2009 or 2010 anymore. That's my point. FriendFeed search is a very strong contender as well. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: FF search has far more interest and potential. And they already play nice with Google. [edit] And yes, Google engineers would be interesting on Twitter. Though Google is already having fun sifting through SearchWiki data. - AJ Kohn

AJ, yes, but Google could make Twitter search 10x better. That's why an acquisition makes sense. Twitter hasn't got good engineers. FriendFeed does. - Meryn Stol

Ok, it seems that we agree now, at least to some extend. :) - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Yup :) I don't think we're that far apart actually. - AJ Kohn

How much would you pay for Twitter if you were head of Google then? My bid is 1 billion. - Meryn Stol

I still don't see the point of them buying Twitter - Rahsheen the Dream

@Meryn: Humm. Given the lack of revenue ... tops, $200MM. I get tech (which I could build anyway) and installed user base/platform - which is what I'm really paying for. - AJ Kohn

AJ, Twitter has already turned down a 500MM bid. Do you realize that? - Meryn Stol

Meryn -- what they think they are worth, what they would like to be worth and what they actually are worth are vastly different numbers I think. - Brian Sullivan

@Meryn: Oh yes, I realize that. I think they should have taken that a ran like the wind. But just because someone else was going to overpay doesn't mean I will. ;) - AJ Kohn

I think what google would be buying is access to the real-time changing social graph (when a user clicks "follow") and the "tweet-stream". Twitter's tech amounts to nothing. In perspective with Google, it's laughable. Even the small team at FF does better. - Meryn Stol

Ok. So you think they were bluffing. Ok, could be. Venture Capital is sometimes just like poker. We even have seen the bluffing around Yahoo / MSFT. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Yes. FF does much better. The social graph (follows) is interesting - and the Twitter version is a slice of the graph but ... it's not complete and I think it's a bit broken through gaming and other ego-driven goals. - AJ Kohn

"hrough gaming and other ego-driven goals", yeah, but so is the web. As a SEO specialist, you should know that. :) - Meryn Stol

Oh, wait, you're not an SEO specialist perse. More like an all-round marketer. Anyway, we see lots of "gaming" with blogs and such also. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Not really bluffing. Twitter really thinks they'll get more. So does Facebook. I just don't see it. Until they show that it is a business real business I'm not keen on buying it. YouTube was different ... a clear 'advertising within video' model was apparent. I don't see the model in Twitter. So it's just tech and users. - AJ Kohn

@Meryn: Yes, I'm an all around marketer but I do a lot in SEO. And yes, there's gaming everywhere. No doubt about that. Lots of greyhat ;) But Twitter has a whole different set that would make integrating the Twitter social graph into other social graphs difficult IMO. I find there's a greater impetus to acquire followers versus other social graphs. FF is a far more natural social graph wouldn't you say? - AJ Kohn

AJ, do you know how revenue from YouTube is doing? Personally, I think that text-ads in search results is the kind of advertising that stays around longest. People don't want to be bothered with ads when consuming content. If Youtube would go crazy with ads, it leaves them open for attack by a P2P video service (which has no hosting costs, so virtually no costs). - Meryn Stol

AJ, yes. Twitter has a very weird culture. Any "TweetRank" algorithm should compensate for the crazy strategies persued by many of the "top" Twitter users. But I think that many Google engineers would find this a very exciting intellectual challenge. Having access to "follow/unfollow" behavior (that is the log of follows/unfollows) would help greatly in seperating the wheat from the chaff. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Off the top of my head, no. But I know they're seeing growth at YouTube. I know YouTube is the second largest search engine if you treated it as a search engine. I know video viewing is soaring. http://friendfeed.com/e... And that studies show people are willing to sit through ads to view content http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/news.... So ... I'd be surprised if YouTube didn't pan out in the very near future. - AJ Kohn

AJ, yes, but in the end, the question is not if the service is growing, but if it adds to the bottom-line. Owning the Youtube database (e.g. the videos) can't enhance regular Google search results as much as owning the Twitter database can. If Youtube was independent, they would naturally let their videos (keywords and such) be searchable, because they wanted their videos to show up in search. For Youtube, deep, real-time access to the database doesn't matter that much. - Meryn Stol

Well, if Google manages to turn Youtube in some kind of "TV" with regular ads, then indeed it will be gold. Yet, I think that devices like Tivo show that people really like to skip ads. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: Oh, I'd disagree. Video is already integrated into universal search and delivers value to Google search. That *and* YouTube will make money on its own. So it's double happiness. It gives robust content for search and Google can monetize clicks on those searches. Twitter (IMO) provides less robust content and clicks on that content would have no revenue stream attached. - AJ Kohn

[BTW Meryn, I'm enjoying this debate!] - AJ Kohn

I think what matters to Google is whether they can keep being THE search box. I think that with real-time / social search coming up, Google's dominance is at stake. How much does an archive of the whole web really matter if everything is written again (in slight different form) each day? With more and more blogs, more and more twitter and FriendFeed users, THAT will be reality. - Meryn Stol

AJ. I'm enjoying myself too. :) I love how FF has accidentally turned out to be such a good platform for high-speed (and public) debate. The commenting here rocks. - Meryn Stol

@Meryn: We disagree on the value of real-time or recency as a factor in search. It's authority and trust (and accuracy) that matter so the archive *is* valuable. I will say that Google needs to ensure the algorithm can evolve and assign authority to recent sites *that merit that authority*. They've done a decent job with blogs. They may have to tinker again to integrate Tweets ... if they carry authority? But Tweets are often not target content, they're transmission or announcement of content. - AJ Kohn

"Tweets are often not target content, they're transmission or announcement of content." indeed. I think it can improve Google's current search results. And that's why Google should own that database. It's too risky to let it in the hands of someone who could seal it off. Delicious.com forbids crawling by search engines I believe. - Meryn Stol

Delicious lets the big four crawl most areas of the site. http://delicious.com/robots... [edit] That's the thing. Really, Twitter should just let Google crawl it and then let the Google Algo take over - that is if Twitter can be a sustainable business. - AJ Kohn

If I were part of Google, I would find 1 billion a very good deal to be ensured of continuous and unlimited access to the "tweet stream". So Larry, Sergei, Eric, if you're reading along: That's my advice. ;) - Meryn Stol