October 21, 2009

Google, Bing - Twitter as "a vehicle for directing ... to large audiences"

Compare:

A recent _Wired_ Twitter article, quoting Twitter's CEO:

Do you understand how money flows to the Internet? When you know that Twitter is a vehicle for directing information and traffic to large audiences, you realize there’s obviously a huge business.

Microsoft Bing search:

Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now).

Google blog:

In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Me: (a while back, for which I was much flamed)

People aren't being connected by the 'real-time messaging service', they're being bundled up and sold.

Once more - I refuse to be a sucker again. I will not play the latest rigged game where the house makes a fortune, the touts get their commission, while the players are fodder for it all.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)