Last July, Google unexpectedly shut down its real time searching feature of messages from the Twitter social networking service. A few days later the media reported on rumors that indicated that Microsoft was trying to renew its own two year Twitter real time search agreement. This week, ZDNet reports that those talks were finally successful. This new agreement will allow Microsoft"s Bing search engine to provide Twitter messages as part of the service"s search results.
There was no formal press release announcing the new deal between Microsoft and Twitter. Instead, as The Next Web reveals, the official Twitter feeds of Twitter and Bing had a rather odd and funny conversation with each other on Tuesday that seemed to confirm that the two companies would be working together on not just real time search results but other unnamed future projects. Microsoft later sent out a brief statement to the press stating, "We are pleased to announce that we are extending our collaboration with Twitter. We are not sharing terms of the agreement." Microsoft and Twitter previously signed a similar deal back in October 2009.
The renewed deal between Microsoft and Twitter could be a huge opportunity for both companies. The Bing search engine still is a distant second next to Google"s market share and having an agreement to offer Twitter messages in Bing"s search results gives Microsoft, at least for now, a leg up on Google. For Twitter, the deal means that it gets a new source of revenue after its agreement with Google was not renewed.