Microsoft partners with Facebook, Twitter on search

(Credit: Bing)

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is indeed bringing real-time search results from Facebook and Twitter to its Bing search engine thanks to two partnerships, search head Qi Lu and senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi announced at the Web 2.0 Summit here on Wednesday.

The Twitter partnership, which will bring all real-time public tweets to Bing, went live in beta on Wednesday at Bing.com/twitter. The Facebook deal, which will access all information shared publicly on the social network, will arrive "at a later date," Mehdi said. It's all part of Bing's strategy to harness "the emerging hot area of real-time information," he added.

No financial terms were disclosed for either deal; in a talk later on Wednesday at Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said that "no money changed hands" in its deal with Microsoft.

"You have to do more visual things, you have to do more sophisticated things, and you have to have better access to data," Mehdi said.

This will also give Microsoft an edge on Google, which currently has no such deals in place--but both Facebook, in which Microsoft has a financial stake, and Twitter are rumored to also be talking to Google as well. (Editor's note: Separately, Google announced a similar deal with Twitter on Wednesday.)

The Twitter deal is nonexclusive, Lu said. He did not comment on Facebook.

Users of the Bing Twitter search can see tweets that match a search query listed in pure chronological order, much like Twitter's own search engine (which it built in with the acquisition of a third-party app called Summize). But you also have the option to see search results in a mode that Mehdi called "best match," where he explained that Bing's team will "apply a bunch of our search techniques and relevancy to improve the results." This will mean that popular tweets and heavily retweeted tweets are brought higher up in results, and spam and duplicate results (as well as adult content) will be filtered out.

The Bing Twitter search also aggregates information around hot topics that goes far deeper than Twitter's "trending topics": the most popular links shared on a given topic, for example, and a way to see where shortened URLs redirect. (R.I.P., Rickroll.)

The 'top links' feature in Bing's Twitter search.

(Credit: Bing)

It's still a work in progress, largely because Facebook and Twitter themselves are changing rapidly as well. "Facebook and Twitter, especially Twitter, are really emerging communication platforms, just a lot of growth and the dominant usage patterns...are still evolving in many ways," said Lu, who recently made the jump from Yahoo to Microsoft.

This post was expanded at 2:54 p.m. PDT.

[sciontcya]

I'm dumping FaceBook now.

[zepol22]

No one cares!
----------------
trolls have to eat too

[Super2online]

Bye ;)

Seeya later alligator and good riddance

[sciontcya]

Aw, did I offend you MS Kool-Aid drinkers?
So thin-skinned you are.

[dhavleak]

@ sciontcya

Nobody cares enough to be offended. You threatened to dump facebook -- please go ahead. Make our day.

[jedmmj11]

(unrelated to above comment)
I bet they were really pissed that Magic Mouse was in there.

[kojacked]

Sounds like a new tool for reporters on trends and such that they can mine from searches against these social networks. Maybe we can do our own "polling" about important social topics like health care by using these types of searches.

[Super2online]

I can certainly see where this could be very useful for business. It would need some type of analysis engine to look for trends, and produce extra revenue to be shared with the provider. For consumers it's nice to be able see what others think about topics at the top of the social psyche very quickly.

It also provides a way for Microsoft to provide a observational public variation on the functionality in Google Wave.

[meotinhoccom]

thank for post

http://www.meotinhoc.com/

[FF2009]

Sorry Bing. No matter how cool you try to be. I wont change my search engine that gives me better results and never lets me down!

Google is my girlfriend. and a hot one. :) lol

[Super2online]

Well, if it's a girlfriend you want, it's well known that Bing provides much better media results then Google does in that category. I'm sure your know exactly what I'm talking about. Take a peak, I think your like what you see.

[captincroc]

Google's appeal is it's UI. A white page, a logo and a long text box. Nobody cares how fast or ehat results show; I would hope Bing's and Google's results would be almost identical. I like the way Bing looks but whats more simple then a long text box on a white page?

[LLIB_SETAG]

I Googled on Bing today...Did you Google on Bing today?

[captincroc]

I did and really didn't like it. Despite Bing making a step into new things, it just doesn't 'do it' for me.

[slecalvez]

Go Bing! At leat they are innovating. Google's been the same lame blue link results since they started. That happens when any company (including Microsoft) has a monopoly... innovation goes down the drain.

[AluminumMonster]

Awesome so now when CNN needs to look for some breaking news they can just use Bing.

Seriously though i hate Twitter, but i guess this is somehow useful.....

[spacydog]

Congrats Bing!

[lennie22]

I think this is to go along with the xbox360 integration. I'm looking forward to this, facebook, I really won't have to have my computer on beside me.

[digitallife4you]

thanks for post
http://digitallifeforyou.blogspot.com/

[nataliev39]

I think that this partnership is a good sign! I am very excited to see where the internet and real time news and media go with this new connection. I think that maybe after reading this article, I might actually try using Bing. This new added feature can only put them a step ahead and I think that it was a great marketing strategy for all the Twitter obsessed people out there.

[nashville2]

How's the weather in Redmond?

[nashville2]

Looks like Google is doing the same thing with Twitter:
http://blog.twitter.com/2009/10/google-nice.html

[luke_marsh]

Advertising standards.
It needs to be fully studied as to what most appeals to the consumer in terms of advertising.
As we move too HTML 5 ect Advertising can't simply be hidden away trying to get eyeballs it has to be good and liked by the consumer at all levels and there has to be a degree of unanimity across the industry as to what the end user experiences not necessary the back end of the business. Doing this allows all the competitive groups for eyeballs ect to focus more on content and service and all too market better off the fall out from older Advertising medium models and leads to an overall better experience and more stable revenue stream for whole Internet industry.