Twitter partners with Yandex for real-time search
(Reuters) - Twitter and Russian search engine Yandex have agreed a partnership that will allow Yandex to show new tweets in its search results almost instantly, as Twitter becomes an increasingly important source of real-time information.
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter had already aligned with Yahoo Japan in a strategic alliance, while Yahoo's 2009 move into real-time search showed that search portals were competing to surface fast-moving web updates. The Yandex agreement extends Twitter's distribution through a major search destination rather than relying only on Twitter's own interface.
The partnership also arrives after Twitter demonstrated its value as an early news channel, with the service carrying reports of Whitney Houston's death ahead of mainstream coverage. That makes rapid indexing a product feature for Yandex as well as a distribution channel for Twitter.
First-order effects
- Yandex can place newly published tweets in its results almost immediately, making its search pages more useful for queries tied to unfolding events.
- Twitter gains another search-based audience for its public posts, extending the partner-distribution approach seen in its Yahoo Japan alliance.
Second-order effects
- Yandex's added freshness raises the competitive value of real-time indexing for other search portals that want timely social updates in their results.
- Publishers and users seeking breaking information gain another route to Twitter content, reducing the advantage of finding those updates only inside Twitter's service.
Third-order effects
- Bilateral access agreements are becoming a key part of real-time search: search engines need social feeds, while social platforms can turn public posts into distribution inventory across regional portals.
The trend: Real-time search is evolving from a standalone feature into a partnership market in which search portals license or integrate social streams to compete on speed.