Bing Now Shows Some Twitter Updates
Microsoft is dipping its toes into the hot new area of real-time search. The company said Wednesday that Bing, the search engine it unveiled a month ago, would begin including the latest output of popular Twitter users in its search results.
“There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created, primarily by Twitter,” wrote Sean Suchter, general manager of Microsoft’s search technology center in Silicon Valley, in a blog post about the feature. “We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.”
The change will affect a limited number of Twitter-related searches. When users enter, for example, “Al Gore Twitter,” “Al Gore tweets” or “@algore” in the Bing search box, the top result will be the most recent Twitter updates from the former vice president. Microsoft said it had picked a few thousand Twitter accounts based on their number of followers and the volume of tweets they produce. They include the actor Ashton Kutcher; Kara Swisher, a technology journalist; Danny Sullivan, a search analyst; and some news services that are popular on Twitter. Bing will update the Twitter results every 60 seconds.
The new service does not involve any special relationship between Microsoft and Twitter. Microsoft developed it using public programming interfaces, or A.P.I.’s, that Twitter makes available to anyone.
Although all major search engines index Twitter profiles and some older tweets, Bing is the first major search engine that is integrating with Twitter in this way. This could help Bing keep up the buzz it has generated in the past month.