(2009-10-21) Google Twitter Firehose Deal

Google did a deal with Twitter so they can index the firehose in more-RealTime. Microsoft did one too.

Dave Winer says Twitter got Google and Microsoft to pay for the content that the Old Media industry should have been hosting instead of Twitter. This is Dave's old point about how Newspaper-s should have been hosting blogs/etc. They (Old Media) should own the platform. And it's bad for the rest of us that they don't because the moguls of Silicon Valley have a very crude understanding of what news is. Witness the longevity of the 140 character limit and the inability of Twitter to carry any type of content other than text. The horror of the Suggested Users List... And FriendFeed. Oh man what a wasted opportunity that was. If they had an ounce of competitive spirit they would have noticed that the news industry wasn't seeing their way into this space, and they would have gotten on a plane and camped out in NY and found someone, anyone, with a good flow of news to partner with, to guide them toward creating the fantastic news system that Twitter wasn't building.