Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/02/24/yahoo_twitter_pact/

Yahoo! turns! Twitter! firehose! on! self!

Web2.0rhea insta-search

By Cade Metz

Posted in Legal, 24th February 2010 05:55 GMT

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. ®