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Yahoo! and Twitter partner up for real-time search results

Yahoo! and Twitter have announced a new deal which will see real-time Twitter feeds integrated across the Yahoo! network.

The partnership, announced Wednesday morning, is the latest move in Yahoo!’s drive to deliver personally relevant information from various online sources.

The integration means that Yahoo!’s search engine now indexes tweets, a feature that Yahoo! bosses are hoping will make their service faster, timelier and therefore more popular.

Although it is unknown whether money has been exchanged between the two parties, Google are believed to have paid several million to the micro-blogging service during a similar deal struck between the two sites last year.

As well as the search engine integration, which has already gone live, the new partnership will allow Yahoo! users to access their Twitter feed via the company’s email service, its homepage and via the content sections of its site.

Users will also be able to tweet from various locations across Yahoo!’s product range, although the exact details of how this will be carried out are unknown.

The features yielded by the new partnership pose a real threat to Google and Microsoft, who do not have a breath of content sites like Yahoo! does.

“We’re turning the key to the online social universe – you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!” said Brian Lamkin, senior vice president of Yahoo!’s consumer products group.

Twitter’s co-founder, Biz Stone added: “The information in one single tweet can travel light-years farther with this Yahoo! integration. Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most.”

Some industry experts have expressed words of warning over Twitter’s various recent joint ventures. Brad Shimmin, a social media analyst at Current Analysis, said that although Twitter may be ubiquitous, it could blend into the background as a service for other platforms.

“What matters is not that your micro-blogging is running on Twitter,” said Shimmin. “What matters is that wherever you call home, you are communicating using the methodology of micro-blogging. Twitter could become less relevant. What counts most is the communication rather than the brand.”

Yahoo! also announced another alliance this week, after the U.S Department of Justice and the European Commission gave the go ahead for the company to commence its joint search agreement with Microsoft.

The deal will see Microsoft powering Yahoo!’s back-end searches, allowing optimization for Yahoo’s search results.

The complete Yahoo!-Twitter integration package is expected to roll out over the course of the year.