After failing to strike an agreement to re-up its “firehose” data stream licensing deal with Google, Twitter is now trying to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to a similar arrangement with Microsoft’s Bing search service, said sources close to the situation.
The outcome could mean a lot to both Twitter and Bing. Without a deal, the San Francisco microblogging service would be without two major paid distribution outlets for its full live stream of user tweets, a significant source of its revenue to date.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing — which is waging an expensive battle in a search arena dominated by Google — has the opportunity to be the only major search player with extensive access to social data from both Facebook and Twitter.
