Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals
Is there gold in them thar tweets? — Maybe so, because-according to sources familiar with the situation-Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals …
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter’s stream had already been framed as a potential source of semantic-web value, while a May argument that Microsoft should acquire Twitter treated the service as strategically important to the software company. The reported parallel negotiations shift that value proposition from ownership to data access.
The talks are unconfirmed, but their reported structure matters: Twitter is said to be discussing separate data-mining arrangements with both Google and Microsoft, positioning its data as a product for major search players rather than merely an input to its own service.
First-order effects
- Twitter gains negotiating leverage by reportedly engaging Google and Microsoft separately over access to its data.
- Google and Microsoft each face the prospect of needing a commercial arrangement with Twitter to use its data-mining output, if the reported talks result in agreements.
Second-order effects
- Parallel negotiations make Twitter’s data access a competitive procurement issue for Google and Microsoft, rather than a feature either company can assume is broadly available.
- A licensing route would give Twitter a monetization option that does not depend on a sale to the strategic buyers previously associated with it.
Third-order effects
- If large platforms begin paying for access to user-generated streams, the economic value of social services shifts toward control of data rights and the terms on which those rights are licensed.
- The episode points to a search market in which differentiated data sources become strategic inputs, increasing the leverage of platforms that can package and restrict access to their data.
The trend: Social platforms are beginning to treat the data generated by their users as a licensable product for search and analysis companies.