One thing quite clear from that cache of internal Twitter documents leaked to TechCrunch last week is that the micro-blogging service has been holding ongoing talks with Google about the ways the two companies might work more closely together.
It's also evident that Google is taking its much smaller partner very seriously. Just check out the number of official Twitter accounts Google is maintaining:
Main (12)
Geo-related (7)
Ads-related (18)
Developer & technical (8)
Culture, People (2)
Country or Region (7)
That is 56 accounts, folks.
(How many does your company currently have?) This list was posted by "
Karen Wickre, Google Blog & Twitter Team" to Google's
official blog about a week ago. Clicking through, I find the 18 devoted to ad support especially revealing.
Google already devotes a substantial amount of online resources to its AdSense customers, and employs an army of "optimizers" to help clients get the most out of their relationship with the search and advertising giant.
But now, Google seems to be experimenting with an attempt to essentially outsource some of this support via social media, or at least via Twitter, i.e., to the crowd. If so, this may represent a novel experiment and one worth delving into further in the coming months.
David Weir
David Weir is a veteran journalist who has worked at Rolling Stone, California, Mother Jones, Business 2.0, SunDance, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MyWire, 7x7, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which he cofounded in 1977. He’s also been a content executive at KQED, Wired Digital, Salon.com, and Excite@Home. David has published hundreds of articles and three books,including "Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets Its Story," and has been teaching journalism for more than 20 years at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Stanford.
