Twitter and Facebook shake it up
In the last few days, both Twitter and Facebook have experienced and caused (respectively) some shake-ups. Twitter and Google parted ways, while Facebook and Google + have come to mirror each other ever more closely. As Google works to break into the social networking world, it’s interesting to track its dismissal of other platforms in what seems like an effort to become completely self-reliant.
Earlier this week, Twitter’s two-year agreement with Google expired, and neither network tried to renew it.
Twitter has decided to fly the coup rather than try to renew its agreement with Google (at least publicly, Google hasn’t tried to renew it either).
Since 2009, this agreement had allowed Google to use Twitter’s information to facilitate Real Time search (Google also used other social media platforms to supply this information, including Facebook page updates and posts made on Google Buzz). Google commented on the end of this agreement:
“Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2. While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.”
Now, Google can see what everyone else can see – and not more. We can’t help but think this will have a negative effect- Real Search with Twitter results was hugely popular.
Twitter, on the other hand, continues to work with Bing and Yahoo in a similar capacity to how it used to work with Google. Only time will tell how this will affect the use of these other search engines.
Twitter and Google +
Google says that Real Time search will make a triumphant return (eventually). That leaves us with the question: Will it re-launch with Google + as its source? Yes and no. Google says Google + results will be included, but that the new social network will not be the exclusive source for real time search results. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan had the following to say about this new development:
“You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.”
Is Google moving towards a self-sustaining network, where interaction with others outside of Googleplex is minimal? It seems like the search engine is preparing for the social network apocalypse, when the other major social networks implode and Google + is the only one left.
Yesterday, Facebook made a huge announcement – in addition to adding multi-person chat (allowing for greater collaboration – hello one huge perk expected of Google +), it will be incorporating Skype into Facebook so that users can not only call each other from the social network, but they can also video chat with Facebook friends. So, if you are chatting with someone on Facebook (or just looking at his or her profile), you can click the icon in the top right of the chat box (or at the top of his or her profile page) and speak face to face with him or her.
Facebook and Google +: Clash of the titans
Well, the connection here is obvious (my apologies for commenting on an already overly-saturated topic). Just after Google introduces arguably one of the coolest features of Google +, “hangout” (where users can video chat within the social network), Facebook coincidentally comes out with a very similar feature. Now, it’s just a race to see which one is implemented universally not only first, but also most effectively. Point one for Facebook: I don’t have to wait for an invite to test it out.
Facebook make have over 750 million users on its side, but Google + has a heck of a lot of hype going for it as well. Who will win? Maybe both. What do you think, can Facebook and Google + successfully co-exist?
Of course, we’d be able to comment further on this topic if we had a Google + invite (hint hint). Tell us your thoughts about this topic on the networks to which we do have access: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.