...almost 3 three years and has become a treasure trove of information and links " which makes it hot property for the likes of Google and Bing (aka Microsoft).

The major search engines have deflected the need to talk real-time data with Twitter for some time " but times have changed.

A few months back, Twitter repositioned itself as a search engine for its own content. Given the rapid adoption of the platform, this move caught the attention of the major search engines.

This week, Twitter is in separate discussions with both Google and Bing. The aim of discussions is to strike deals that would see both search engines incorporate Twitters 140 character messages in their respective results.

Kara Swisher via the Allthingsd blog provided further background on the discussions (via unnamed sources):

a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

These include a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results.

If a deal can be struck, itll be music to the Twitter teams ears. While the platforms adoption has grown at a remarkable level " theyve been unable to find a sustainable way to monetize the service.

With a solid revenue stream, Twitter will be able to continue their innovation in the real time publishing area " which is a hot button at the moment.

What will be interesting is to see how the tweets (twitter posts) are incorporated into the search results. And even more interesting will be to see how they are ranked. Some interesting times ahead for SEO.

Stay tuned, as well be sure to let you know comes from the Twitter Google and Bing discussions.

If youre on twitter, why not connect with the ineedhits team. Here are some of our profiles:

• @ineedhits
• @renelemerle
• @courtneymills
• @petergavalas
• @warrenduff

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