Social Media Update: Twitter Grabs a Google Lawyer

Social Media Update: Our communication has changed.  We are clearly no longer a society that gathers all of our news from the local newspaper and the local news station. Rather, we are gathering it from sources everywhere. Whether it is a blogger that breaks a news story, a Google search that turns up the most up to date stock market numbers, or a Twitter Iran situation, the way we get our information has changed.

Two online entities that have a wide span of popularity are Google and Twitter.  Recent developments as the start-up company, Twitter, has taken off, beg the question, “Will Google and Twitter continue to co-exist?”

Google is not only a household name but  similar to how the brand name “Kleenex” took over the term “tissue paper”, “Google it” now means, run an online search.  Google is dominating the search market.  In the more recent future Twitter has begun to take a nationwide position and Twitter words like the ones listed below are being introduced into our vocabulary:

tweet(ing): the act of posting to Twitter.
tweeple: Twitter people, Twitter members, Twitter users.
twitterpated: to be overwhelmed with Twitter messages.
politweet: a political tweet

According to a New York Times article, “Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has stolen a prominent Google lawyer.” Mashable reports on it as well, stating, “The site has nabbed Alexander Macgillivray, the former Senior Product and Intellectual Property Counsel at Google…”  Although Twitter hasn’t had any major legal battles up to this point, they are thinking proactively as they begin to look at their future ROI plans.

Google recently released a list of all their Google Twitter accounts. TecUpdates reports that there are 45 Google Accounts on Twitter. That information alone begs the question, would Google buy Twitter? According to Sam Howat,

“Having many accounts to communicate with your customers via a popular medium does not qualify it for purchase. Twitter is not going to sell itself for anything less than $1Billion. Google is hoarding its cash just like everyone else during this recession.”

Howatt goes on in his post to discuss Google Wave.  Google Wave is a new Google application that will be released, this app will “consolidate the attention of Google’s huge user-base no matter what social network they are involved in,” according to Scott Hewat.  He goes on to say, “With the ability to converse in private, public, real-time, or threaded email, Wave is a fully branded, all-inclusive Google product that makes the communication lives of people amazingly easy.”

All that to say, in this information age, technology age, computer age, whichever ‘age’ you choose to adopt…  The verdict on the Google and Twitter relationship is still up in the air. However, the fact remains in our social media update,  our communication as  a culture has changed and  it’ll be interesting to see how our culture continues to shift and change as our communication practices do.

What are your thoughts regarding pros and cons of the communication changes? Do you think that Twitter grabbing a Google lawyer signifies any future shifts in their business?

Thanks for reading and yes, you can follow us on Twitter.

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07.15.09