Google is planning to soon return Twitter posts in their standard search results. This will have HUGE implications for companies! It sounds like from Google’s announcement that they will sift and sort years worth of previous twitter posts into search results related to keyword searches.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900052&subSection=News
(Note that the twitter announcement is at the bottom of the article.)
Talking to Dave McCoy at Gartner it seems that the more important announcement rather than the general social media search returns mentioned because the social media returns require that a searcher have a Google account and profile, be logged in, and have a previous database of searchable social content that is connected with their Google’s contacts list. Since twitter posts are essentially a public microblog, they won’t require these prerequisites in order to show up in the returns.