Microsoft has decided to improve the company’s real-time search by including the latest output of popular Twitter users in the company’s search engine, Bing, which was launched one month ago.
Microsoft said there has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created, primarily by Twitter, and the company has been watching this phenomenon with great interest and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.
But the change will affect a limited number of Twitter-related searches. For instance, when users enter “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 API’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, and it may help Bing keep up the buzz it has generated in the past month.
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