Promoted Tweets are a form of advertising on Twitter, in which an advertiser pays Twitter to display tweets at the top of a Twitter search results page or even within a user’s tweet stream.

These ads will now also appear at the top of the relevant Google real time search results page – when a user filters searches to show only “Latest” results.  However, these ads or Promoted Tweets as they are called, will not show up on a regular Google search results page.

Google realtime search results showing Promoted Tweets

While this is the first time that Google has ever displayed ads from another network on their search results page, it may not be the last. According to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, who first blogged about these ads, Google has issued a statement saying, “Twitter is pioneering advertising against short-form content, so it was a natural starting place for us. We’re certainly open to continue exploring other advertising models and systems, including those we might develop in-house.”

The revenue generated by these ads will be split between Google and Twitter on a 50/50 basis, according to sources at Twitter.

Other Social Networks To Follow Suit?

If Google is true to its word and starts allowing ads from other networks, could we soon see more real time ads from Twitter, and then maybe Facebook ads and even promoted stories through Digg Ads?

While such initiatives would see a short-term increase in revenue by monetising products that previously weren’t monetised, they’re rather unlikely to really happen except in situations where Google AdWords has failed to monetise a service.

The appearance of Promoted Tweets on real time search results is probably a result of the original deal that Twitter forged with Google. When the deal was forged, Google was in a race against Microsoft to launch a real time search product. Twitter most likely used their favourable bargaining position to require Google to only show ads from Twitter alongside real time search results that were pulled from the social news site. The absence of regular AdWords ads on these pages, when compared to Google search results pages for all other time-range searches corroborates that this was the most likely scenario.

Twitter ads on real time search / AdWords ads on past 24 hours filter

When Bing made their announcement, Satya Nadella, the Senior VP of Online Services, informed users that their search results would be enhanced by the ‘Like’ feature on Facebook.

In other words, when users conduct a search on Bing, they will be able to see which of their Facebook friends has ‘Liked’ the product or service being searched. Results that were ‘Liked’ by these friends will also be placed at the top of the search results page as they are likely to have more value for that user.

“Liked” results on Bing let friends help users decide which movie to watch

Thus, certain search results on Bing will now be personalised for individual users. This Facebook ‘Likes’ feature will be active only when the user has signed in to a Facebook account.

Another feature which Bing has also introduced, in conjunction with Facebook, is the ability to search more easily for people. Bing will now make it possible for users to search people by name and will bring up results from Facebook that are more likely to be the searcher’s friends. Users will then be able to add that person as a friend, or send the person a message directly from the Bing search results page.

Bing social profile search

Google’s newly integrated social search feature shows users conducting a search on Google for certain trending topics an indication of the pages popularity by including the number of times the page has been shared next to the page’s title in the search results. This social shares link, however, appears only on the main search results page and not in Google News.

Google social search results indicating number of times the article was shared

When users clicks on the ‘shared by’ link they are taken to the Google real time search results page for that link, which will show the real-time sharing activity for that particular page.

Unlike the Bing feature, this is a general sharing feature and it does not specify who has shared the article. It also does not give the user any specific information from friends whose opinion the user is more likely to rely on.

Bing is gradually rolling out the social search feature, and will currently limit the roll out to users in the USA only. Google’s feature is already live in the USA and UK.

Why Google’s latest social search feature doesn’t tie-in better with their social graph and show shares from contacts within a user’s social circle is not clear. Even with social graph integration, Google’s offering would rate second-class, at best, as Microsoft has a very big advantage here owing to their relationship with Facebook.

The new feature allows users to see exactly where in the world a particular tweet has originated from. It also shows nearby locations such as restaurants, shops and theatres.

Twitter Places is available on both twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com. The service was launched to coincide with the ongoing World Cup, allowing users to tag their tweets with the location from where they are sending the tweet, which is especially cool for those sitting inside the stadium and watching the FIFA World Cup live!

Tweets with embedded location information

The current football World Cup is just one example of how Twitter Places could be helpful. People receiving tweets regarding breaking news stories are more likely to be interested in tweets originating from the place where the event is actually happening.

Users who wish to see other tweets originating from a particular location can click a Twitter Place within a tweet to see all recent tweets from that location.

Foursquare and Gowalla will be integrated into Twitter Places, as many users on these sites already automatically tweet check-ins. Twitter will also release an API to allow developers to integrate their applications with Twitter Places.

Twitter Places will be made available to users across 65 countries in the course of about one week. Mobile applications such as Twitter for iPhone, Android and Blackberry will also soon have access to Twitter Places.

A few advertisers have been invited to test this new format, which includes the Twitter logo in the left hand corner of the ad. These ads will appear on the Google content network, and will feature the latest tweet from the advertiser’s selected Twitter account in a box in the centre. A button on the right side of the ad says “Follow on Twitter”.

Example of a Google Real Time Twitter Ad

Users that click the button become followers of the advertised Twitter stream automatically without having to move away from the page.

The ads are connected to the Twitter account of the advertiser, thus allowing dynamic insertion of all tweets. If the user clicks on any part of the ad other than the ‘Follow on Twitter’ button, he is automatically linked to the advertisers Twitter page. If the user clicks on any part of the ad other than the ‘Follow on Twitter’ button, he is automatically linked to the advertisers Twitter page.

While Google has not made any announcements about this beta test, an Oslo based advertising firm Qualité Search Marketing has said that they were invited by Google to join the test on May 7 and have seen a modest increase in the number of followers.

A Google spokesperson has said that “To provide more marketing opportunities for our advertisers to reach users in moments that are relevant and useful to them, we are currently testing different ways that allow advertisers to better update their ads in real time,”

Neither Google nor Twitter have commented on the financial arrangements between them regarding this new display format.

Google has been working on the new method of indexing their search results for a while now, and many SEO professionals are well aware of the upcoming update, code named “Caffeine“. Representatives from Google have maintained that the Caffeine update wouldn’t go live before 2010.

2010 is here, now. The search engine has already been testing Caffeine in one of their data centres since last summer, and it may be rolled out very soon.

In fact, there are some bloggers who claim that they have already noticed faster search results.

As far as most users are concerned, the official launch of Caffeine will not make much difference to the search results, as Caffeine is more of a behind-the-scenes worker. There will be no visual changes in the search results.

Only the overall speed with which the search results are received is expected to change for the better. This factor will be especially useful in searches for photos and videos.

A study of Google Caffeine conducted by an SEO firm found that it will give more importance to news and social media for generic search terms, but specific keywords will show more regular websites on the subject. In general, they found that search rankings are not very likely to change, except for some websites, which may not have updated their content for a very long time. It will, therefore, be beneficial for websites to remain up-to-date and refresh their content regularly once the Caffeine update is launched.

Twitter Tab on Yahoo! Search for Hot News items

Yahoo! now incorporates information from tweets, photos and videos posted on Twitter. They have revamped the Yahoo! News Shortcut result, that shows at the top of the organic results for queries on breaking news topics, into a horizontal tabbed form, which links to three or four news categories.

The first tab in the new Yahoo! News Shortcut result shows news sites with snippets from articles. The next tabs link to photos and / or to videos and the last one to Twitter.

Searches on certain popular news stories currently bring up the Twitter tab, which then takes users to the Twitter search results page for that query. Screenshots provided by Yahoo!, though, show the Twitter tab loading with a couple of selected tweets and associated videos.

According to Ivan Davtchev and Nitzan Achsaf on Yahoo! Search blog, “Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos and tweets about a breaking news story on the Yahoo! News Shortcut. Many of you are already familiar with the existing Yahoo! News Shortcut, which displays headlines on our Web search results when you look for news stories. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches.”

Although both Google and Bing have already started incorporating Twitter feeds into their search results, Yahoo! claims that they are the first to integrate Twitter with news, which actually makes a lot of sense since Twitter is growing into a rather popular source of breaking news round the world.

They are hopeful that this will make Yahoo! News the first choice of users looking for current information on any breaking news stories. Yahoo! will also run a separate algorithm to filter out any irrelevant information that is present on Twitter.

Yahoo!’s Larry Cornett said that they were very pleased with user reactions they saw during initial user testing of this feature.

Realtime search service OneRiot, which is in talks with Yahoo! to provide them with realtime search, is also tying up with mobile search engine, Taptu, to deliver realtime search services to mobile Internet users. Taptu will make use of OneRiot’s API to provide these realtime search results.

OneRiot has already started developing additional APIs that will be able to provide relevant ads on mobile handsets, thus monetising the service. The service collects realtime results from various sources such as Twitter, Digg and Facebook.

Taptu has added a new feature on it homepage, which is essentially a search engine interface compatible with mobile browsers. The homepage has a search box with options to search the Web, Images and now, ‘Buzz’, which is where the realtime search results will be provided.

Buzz search is currently available on all iPhone, iPod Touch, G1 (Android), Blackberry Storm 1, Nokia N97 and 5800 handsets. All other devices still show the old search interface, which provides the option of ‘All’, images, video and music searches.

Until now, mobile users could access realtime search results by searching for trending topics on Twitter. However, this new service will certainly be more direct and efficient.

Mobile users with compatible handsets can test the service at:

www.taptu.com

While both Google and Microsoft’s Bing, have made separate deals with just Twitter, Yahoo! is reportedly in talks with OneRiot for a much broader real time search offering.

Reuters reports that Yahoo! Inc is looking to match its rivals in providing up-to-the-minute Internet search results. The company is supposed to be running tests with several real time search partners, according to sources familiar with the matter.

According to Reuters, Yahoo! is currently holding talks with several companies to provide users with realtime search results on a trial basis. OneRiot is one of those companies.

However, there have been no official announcements on this score from either Yahoo! or OneRiot.

OneRiot, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, taps into several sources including Twitter, Digg and their 3-million-strong user base to collect real time information.

Initially, Yahoo! will provide the real time search results in a separate box at the top of the search results page, to see how their users react to this service.

While Yahoo! and Microsoft have already signed a 10 year search deal last July, it is not expected to turn operational until next year. Until then, Yahoo! needs to fend for itself. Understandably, they would not like to be left behind in the real time search race, and hence this trial with OneRiot seems like a good option to pursue.

Google Trends already shows users which topics are among the 100 most popular searches on a given day. Google has now incorporated this feature in Google Search, so that users do not need to visit another page to find out what the trending topics of the moment are.

Now, when a user Google’s a particular topic which is among the top 100 in popularity, Google will display a graph at the bottom of the search page to indicate the rate of rise of that topic and other details about it.

Google highlights trending topics within organic SERPs

Google Trends’ Hot Trends feature has also been pruned from its existing top 100 topics to only 40. However, when any of the top 100 topics are searched for it will show up on the homepage.

This move will brings Google a bit closer to imitating Twitter’s popular topics and real-time search functionality. It also allows users to not only know what are the most popular topics at the moment, but will also provide them with additional information about those topics. These Hot Trends will be updated every hour to show how the scenario is changing.

The Hot Topic being searched will not only get a number to indicate its rank in the popularity list but will also be classified with terms such as ‘On Fire’ and Volcanic’ etcetera.

This feature is officially launched only in the U.S. and Japan, but can be seen by some users in the UK at present.

Even at present, various platform developers have been making some advances in this matter, with the help of the very basic APIs available to them. The currently available geolocation based projects are made with the use of the location details filled in by users on their profiles. However, this is not a very reliable and effective way to judge immediate location as users often tweet from multiple locations without updating their location each time.

Twitter will allow users to add in their latitude and longitude if they wish to do so with each tweet. The service will be strictly opt-in, with the default set to ‘off’.

Tweet-level geotagging will be treated differently than the location data entered manually by the user in their profile. Location data in the profile will continue to be used to give a general idea to visitors about where a user is normally based.

Udates to the API will be made available a couple of weeks before launch, to allow third-party app developers to incorporate this new feature. Documentation for the geolocation function in the API is already available.

Location data will be passed in the following format (code):
curl -d “lat=37.780467&long=-122.396762&status=I have arrived” -u user:pass

The W3C geolocation API will be used on m.twitter.com for the launch of the mobile service.

Users who decide to disclose their location will have to opt in on the Twitter website itself, and the location data won’t be stored indefinitely. Third-party applications will not be given the ability to enable / disable the feature via the API in order to avoid rogue apps turning on the feature without a user’s consent.

Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, says, “if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet by tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.”

Placing this choice squarely in the hands of the user is a smart move to avoid the usual problems regarding user privacy and security.

The geolocation service will enable users to follow tweets sent out by people from their neighbourhood or city in addition to tweets from the users they normally follow. This facility would be especially useful, when information needs to be spread urgently, such as in times of crises.

Search results will most likely also reflect location awareness in the near future, once more users opt in to use this feature. This could make Twitter even more useful and much more relevant than Google for real time, on-the-spot searches.

No official date has yet been announced for the launch of this service, though, given the amount of information and developer support available indicates that it should be just a matter of weeks.

Through FriendFeed, it is possible for users to share all sorts of social media updates, such as those on Facebook, Twitter and blogs from one site itself. It will now be easier for Facebook users to access updates from other platforms. Users won’t need different applications or APIs to access updates, as they had to do earlier.

Facebook has already started rolling out FriendFeed features to users and it should be available to all Facebook users within the next few days. Then, users will be able to see live activity feeds from all their friends who allow their updates to be publicly accessed.

Facebook has been trying to compete with Twitter as far as real-time indexing of search results is concerned, but have not yet been very effective there. FriendFeed has already incorporated this feature in their site, so it is now readily available to Facebook users.

Now Facebook can use this feature to serve ads for various brands while giving its 250 million users access to a very vast amount of data.

Many have argued that Facebook probably bought a much better deal than Twitter, as the latter is currently riding high on a surge of popularity and would probably command much more than its true worth from any prospective buyer – possibly the reason why merger talks failed back in March.

Twitter-esque feeds and functionality are already available on Facebook and their new iPhone app. They need not acquire Twitter to mimic that functionality. Facebook’s user base is also much larger – 250 million and counting!

The speed with which Facebook has rolled out the real-time search functionality, though, indicates that rather than combat Twitter’s micro-blogging dominance, their main objective is dominance of the real-time search space, which could then turn into yet another giant’s battleground, this time between Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Google claim that this new engine has been in the works for several months now and has nothing to with the launch of Bing by Microsoft. The claim is quite believable as it would hardly be possible to put together a new search engine in a matter of weeks.

Google has now released a developer’s preview of this new search engine to get user feedback in order to fine tune the product before the final launch.

This new version has been labeled ‘Caffeine’:

Search using Google Caffeine

Google has claimed that this new version of their search engine will be faster, more accurate and more comprehensive than before, even though the appearance of the search results page will continue to be the same as that of the old search results page. This improvement will be due to several technical changes which have been incorporated. The results will also be indexed in real-time, as the search engines of Twitter and Facebook are.

While they claim that the newer version is much faster than the older one, the actual difference in time will only be in fractions of a second, which will make no real difference to the average user, as he is hardly likely to actually measure whether the time taken to generate the results is 0.1 second or 0.2 seconds.

As far as accuracy and comprehensiveness are concerned, these are very subjective terms and so they may vary from search to search. While the new Google may provide better results for some searches, the older version may be better for others and indeed Bing may be better for yet others.

Whatever the changes may be, competition between search engines is certainly good for the user.

YouTube RealTime shows up as a bar on the bottom of all pages on the site for users who are logged in and participating in the beta test. Not only can participating users see which of their friends are online, but they can also see which videos those friends are watching, and what they think about the videos, based on the comments posted by those friends.

Screenshot of RalTime toolbar showing friends’ video views

The first button on the toolbar indicates that RealTime sharing is activated. The service can be turned off so that users share only videos they wish to. Adjacent to this is a button that is enabled when the user watches a video. Clicking on the button shows a list of other users viewing the same video.

An ‘Online Friends’ button shows a list of friends currently logged into YouTube. The last button, a little bell with a number beside it

During the closed testing period each user can invite up to 25 online friends to try RealTime and share their viewing experiences. While this limits the number of users who can trial the service, it is gradually expanding, as each invitee is given 25 invites to distribute further. Google had used a similar trial invitation system when Gmail was first launched.

A lot of YouTube users go to the site without any specific video in mind. They could be particularly interested in finding out what their friends are viewing and then sharing these videos with other friends. The added video views could generate more ad revenue for YouTube and its advertisers.

This is not the only change coming to YouTube. The video sharing site recently unveiled two new sections featuring full-length movies and TV shows and a limited number of users are also trialling a new channel layout.

Sample new channel layout on YouTube