Yahoo! turns! Twitter! firehose! on! self!
Web2.0rhea insta-search
Yahoo! has purchased direct access to the Twitter "firehose" - a gigantic stream of Web2.0rhea - providing near real-time access to public Tweets from its primary search engine.
As part of a new agreement with Twitter - announced Tuesday evening - the company will also insta-stream Tweets to several other Yahoo! services, including Yahoo! News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports, and will let users access their personal Twitter accounts from various Yahoo! pages.
Directly from Yahoo!, Twitter users will have the power to, yes, update their own Twitter "status" - a web post no longer than 140 characters - or track the feeds of those they're "following." Yahoo! recently announced similar integration with Facebook.
The company said it had already plugged the Twitter firehose into its search engine and that users will see the insta-stream beginning today. Other aspects of the pact will reach users "later this year."
Yahoo! already included Tweets in its search results, but it was doing so through Twitter's public APIs. Now, like Microsoft and Google before it, the company has agreed to pay for direct access to the data stream. The company says this will improve the "relevance" and "freshness" content.
"Let me try to capture the enormity of this integration in 140 characters or less: We’re turning the key to the online social universe - you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!," reads a canned statement from Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president in Yahoo!'s consumer products group. "We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds - and the world - together for easy access."
We're pretty sure that's more than 140 characters. But there you have it. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Yahoo! is on the verge of closing a pact with Microsoft that will see its search engine replaced by Redmondian technology, but the Bingification of Yahoo! search is still months away, and Yahoo!'s Twitter extends well beyond search. ®
COMMENTS
"turning the key to the online social universe"
Sadly, methinks they're not turning the key in the direction I'd hoped.
Oh great
The sewer spewer has gotten an extension to its territory. Glee.
Or not.
In any case, that definitely signs the death of the Yahoo bookmark on my browser.
Industry standard for shite?
Twitter continues to reach new heights of inanity and this latest coup is probably going to prove there are no limits to crowd-sourced jibberish.
This year's PyCon kicked off with a "keynote" which consisted of GvR attempting to answer questions that were submitted by twats. It was as ridiculous and embarassing as you can imagine as it descended fairly quickly into recursive posts of "my post was just on the screen". It might have been funny if I hadn't flown 8000 km.
Hmmm.
Just as well nobody uses Yahoo search, then. It's sad to admit this, but Bing seems to have the cleanest search results, least encumbered with Twittery crap. Not that anyone uses Bing either, of course.
"bringing their social worlds together for easy access"
"We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds - and the world - together for easy access."
That's a good idea. Nobody's thought of that one before; I bet Yahoo will get lots more visitors and users as a result of this.
Where's the sarcasm icon?
