MAJOR announcements by Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter - what you need to know!

[Peter du Toit]

Yesterday was a fascinating day at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco with some really big announcements coming from the two search giants and from the worlds largest and most active social networks.

Here is a summary of the announcements:

1. Twitter has struck a deal with Google and Microsoft (Bing) to gain access to the full public stream of twitter updates.
Google's Comments are here
Microsoft Bing's comments are here

2. Facebook announced that Microsoft Bing will be given access to all status updates that have been marked as "Everyone" by users on the Facebook platform. Commentary on this can be found here

3. Google also announced the launch of something called "Social Search" details can be found here

What do these announcements mean to you? What do they mean for your business? These are all really great questions to ask as they will help you adapt and evolve your business so it can remain relevant in a fast changing world!

In essence what we are seeing take shape is as Sheryl Sandberg Facebook's COO said yesterday "the future is social not search." We are seeing the shift from the information age to the social age and the attention that the worlds largest search engines are giving this indicates that the process is well underway.

Erick Schonfeld writing for TechCrunch yesterday said "Tweets and other real-time data streams [like Facebook's Status Updates] are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And it’s hard to beat millions of people Tweeting out their thoughts—the “pulse of the planet,” if you will—for real-time information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant."

One thing is for sure: you need to begin actively looking at turning your business into a conversational business on the web and you need to begin building a community of people around you who are engaged with you in real-time.

As a result of the serious attention both Google and Microsoft are giving social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter it becomes extremely important for you as a business to have a presence on both these networks. (It's also very clear that as a result of Google's "Social Search" announcement that having a Google Profile is also a very good idea.) But how exactly do you do that? How do you use Facebook and Twitter as business tools?

We are hosting a complimentary TeleSeminar on Wednesday October 28th to discuss how you can get your business "social media ready" (Details and Registration here)