Bing's Twitter search starts with a zeitgeist view.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Microsoft is getting into the real-time search business, as we reported earlier Wednesday from the Web 2.0 Summit. It's good to see a mainstream product dive into this stream, as one of the big issues with searching Twitter is that timeliness can swamp relevancy.
Bing has the opportunity to leverage its well-developed search engine chops to address this--not only will public tweets will show up in search results, Bing can rank results based on relevance of the post, the popularity of the writer, and other, more complex factors.
Uncharacteristically for Microsoft, the new search feature went live shortly after the announcement. (We're told the Facebook integration, which was also announced, will be rolled out in the future.) Here's how Twitterized Bing works for users so far:
The main page give a nice overview of trending topics with a search cloud at the top of the page and a list of popular links that are being shared below it. It's a good way to get a sense of the buzz on Twitter at any moment.
Bing's basic Twitter search result page gives you both live tweets (at the top), and shared links (below).
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Search results pages themselves are likewise split into two sections, a live feed at the top with just four tweets, and a list of shared links at the bottom. Results stream in live at the top of the page, but you can pause the influx.
The "Best match" search juggles the display order to put relevant tweets up top, even if they're not the most timely.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)If you click on the link to "see more tweets" on the main result page, you get a full page of tweets on your query, with the interesting option to sort the results by "Best match." If you choose this, Bing takes a stab at ranking results based on their content and possibly other factors, like popularity and online status of the writer.
Timeliness is still a factor in "Best match" results, so you won't get day-old tweets at the top of the list on a hot topic, but adding a relevancy sort on top of that does make the search results more useful. This is especially true for hot topics where tweets feeding into a time-only sort can end up pushing useful and relevant content right off the page.
Bing unpacks short URLs to show you what people are sharing, with no surpise links.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Back on the main result page, there are links related to your search query. These are automatically unpacked from URL shorteners like Bitly. The link results have under them tweets that included a short link to the page, even if different shorteners were used to get there. Bing's Twitter search thus does a good job of pulling commentary together on a topic (a link) even from people who've never communicated with each other on the service.
None of what Bing does with Twitter is startlingly new. Twitter's own search gives great real-time Twitter results. Other engines like Twazzup and Scoopler combine relevancy rankings into their results. And OneRiot does a very good job with shared links. But it is good to see real-time content start to bleed into mainstream search. It could be useful and relevant for everyone.
But this story won't get truly interesting until the real-time feeds, from Twitter and elsewhere, start to infect the mainstream Web search results. When a trending topic or popular shared link on Twitter starts to change the way standard results are ranked, we'll start to have truly real-time search for all content. Twitter will have an impact across the Web, even for people who never use it.
Microsoft executive Qi Lu will reportedly make a big announcement onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco later on Wednesday morning: that its search engine, Bing, has inked deals with both Twitter and Facebook to bring real-time status updates and tweets into search results. That's something you can't find on Google.
According to AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, neither partnership will actually turn into a product for "weeks, if not months," and that both Twitter and Facebook have also been talking to Google about similar deals.
When asked about the deal announcement earlier on Wednesday at Web 2.0 Summit, Microsoft director of search Stefan Weitz declined to comment, saying, "I have no idea."
Facebook's mum, too. "We don't comment on speculation," a statement e-mailed on Wednesday morning by Facebook spokeswoman Kathleen Loughlin read. "Later today, COO Sheryl Sandberg and VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer will be speaking at Web 2.0 at which time they will be available to answer questions regarding Facebook."
Rumors started swirling earlier this month that Twitter was looking to make big search-results partnerships with Google and Microsoft.
Microsoft already has a stake in Facebook, which it obtained when it invested $240 million in the social network--allegedly beating Google to the punch then, too--two years ago.
While Twitter is far smaller than Facebook, it's already a step ahead in searchability: it acquired third-party Twitter search app Summize last year and built it into the powerful, real-time Twitter Search. Facebook used to keep all of its data behind a log-in wall, but two years ago started to make the first steps toward becoming more accessible to search engines when it gave members the option to let their profiles show up in "people search" queries on the likes of Google.
More recently, it's been making additional small moves toward opening profile content to the Web, like redefining its privacy controls so that members can specify which of their information and updates can be made public.
This post was updated at 9:53 a.m. PT.
Facebook has partnered with liberal news outlet The Huffington Post in an officially sanctioned implementation of its Facebook Connect product.
Called HuffPost Social News, the new site aggregates Huffington Post stories that a given user's Facebook friends have recommended or commented on, and shares the user's Huffington Post activity on their Facebook profiles in turn.
It's a concept fairly similar to TimesPeople, the sharing service that The New York Times launched last year.
"Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news--both the stories they love and the stories they hate--with friends," Eric Hippeau, Huffington Post's still-new CEO, said in a release. "It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."
This use of Facebook Connect is unusual because Facebook typically does not undertake many official partnerships with third-party sites when it comes to its developer APIs. And this particular partnership may come under some scrutiny: The Huffington Post, which began as a political news site and has since expanded into many other areas of coverage, is controversial--not only in terms of its partisan leanings (it was co-founded by left-of-center pundit Arianna Huffington) but because the majority of its bloggers are unpaid and because some critics have argued it relies too heavily on third-party content that it doesn't always pay for.
But the social network's executives appear to have given The Huffington Post their stamp of approval, at least when it comes to the site's model for news consumption.
"The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, herself a veteran of the political world, said in a release. "With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook."
Facebook likely hopes that this partnership will be a sort of example to the news industry--which is obviously looking for some new ideas right now--and that other media outlets will, in turn, build similar products.
Time Warner and Adobe Systems announced on Monday a strategic and non-exclusive alliance wherein the two companies will work with one another to build DRM and Flash publishing into three of Time Warner's properties. Included in the alliance is Warner Bros. Entertainment, Turner Broadcasting System, and Home Box office.
Of the three properties, one of the first to see a real benefit will be Home Box Office. As part of the announcement, Time Warner said that HBO.com would soon be relaunched "making extensive use of the Adobe Flash Platform." In theory this would replace the content provider's "HBO on Broadband" application which is currently limited to subscribers of Wisconsin's Time Warner service and requires a PC, leaving Mac users out in the cold. (Update: HBO on Broadband isn't going anywhere--see below)
In an phone interview on Monday, Jen Taylor, Adobe's director of product management for Flash, said Time Warner was interested in Flash's built-in analytics and metadata services, the latter of which Taylor said makes navigation and exploration of content easier to build from scratch.
Time Warner is already using Flash to power streaming shows on The WB, movie trailers and TV shows at Warnerbrothers.com, and live and archived streaming news on CNN.com.
Update: HBO's Jeff Cusson says the alliance will have no affect on HBO on Broadband. "HBO.com is a promotional website for the network and operates, and will continue to operate, completely separate from HBO on Broadband."
When MySpace launched its MySpace Music service, a joint venture with all the major record labels, in September, it was subject to a persistent criticism: that independent music, the original backbone of the social network's success, had been put on the back burner in favor of the hits.
But now, the News Corp.-owned MySpace has added a handful of independent music partners, both labels and distribution companies, to bring more of the indies to its catalog. As of Thursday, Nettwerk, INgrooves, Iris Distribution, RoyaltyShare, and Wind-up Entertainment have joined MySpace Music, adding "several hundred thousand" songs.
To be fair, MySpace Music has had a partnership from the start with Sony ATV, which gave it access to other indie distributors like The Orchard and Fontana.
"These important new partnerships will allow the MySpace Music community to access even more of their favorite independent music while enabling monetization opportunities for the newly licensed artists," said MySpace Music President Courtney Holt, who was hired from MTV Networks to head the streaming music service. "We are thrilled to have our new partners on board and will continue our aggressive content acquisition efforts."
Flickr on Friday announced that it has formed a partnership with Tiny Prints that will see the online stationery site's services become a part of Flickr's "Do More" offering, which currently enables users to add images from their photostream to credit cards, order prints, and create books.
According to Flickr's John Nguyen, Flickr users will be able to create customized stationery with the images contained in their photostream through the Tiny Prints service. He said that Flickr chose to work with Tiny Prints after it got the company's attention with its "lovely, high-quality, beautifully designed baby announcements, wedding invitations and other photo projects, including holiday cards."
Tiny Prints will join Capital One, MOO, and others as part of Flickr's "Do More" group, but unlike those that focus on adding your images to your credit cards or ordering prints, Nguyen was quick to point out that Tiny Prints will only provide stationery services to its customers.
Tiny Prints can be accessed from Flickr's page now. To commemorate the partnership, Tiny Prints is currently offering a $20 discount on all holiday orders over $99.
Social news site Reddit, which was acquired by Conde Nast's Wired Digital division two years ago, has announced the start of a new strategy to distribute its technology around the Web. It's partnered with the U.K.'s Independent newspaper to install Reddit technology on its Web site and encourage readers to vote up and down on the news.
While a prominent button for the Independent's internal voting system will appear on each of the publication's online news stories (these will show up in a few weeks), it will also accept links submitted from around the Web.
"It's this kind of open mentality that really excited us about working with them," co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in an e-mail.
Reddit opted to make its code open-source in June, an announcement that would presumably lead to the kinds of deals that the company announced on Thursday. It's far smaller than rival Digg, but seems to have a clear message in place: that Reddit is about distribution, not a standalone site.
Google made two announcements Thursday that further advance the company's goal of becoming a power player in television advertising in addition to the Web.
First, the company announced that Harris, which manufactures communications equipment for business and government clients, will be integrating Google's advertising platform into the products it sells to media and communication companies. This means that Harris clients can use Google's service to manage ad inventory, which Mark Piesenan, director of strategic partnerships for Google TV ads, said will "offer media companies the opportunity to leverage (Google's) automated online marketplace, providing a new and efficient sales option for their ad inventory."
Additionally, Google has partnered with CoreMedia Systems, which makes an advertising analytics product called CoreDirect. The CoreDirect software will now start indexing statistics from Google TV ad campaigns.
These partnerships are on the behind-the-scenes side of things, but Google has been making some network partnerships as well: last month, Google announced it will be selling some TV ad time for NBC Universal, and will also be selling inventory for Dish Network and Bloomberg.
Here's a deal that never could've happened in the absence of the developer platform craze: SocialMedia, a media network that focuses on the fledgling niche of "engagement ads," is set to announce a partnership with BuddyMedia, which creates branded applications for clients.
More specifically, SocialMedia clients will have access to BuddyMedia's new analytics and research product, which it calls "BuddyBrain" and formally launched last week. BuddyMedia licenses BuddyBrain as part of a program that it calls "App-vertising Resellers," and the two companies have already teamed up on ad campaigns for clients like FedEx, Anheuser-Busch, and sneaker company New Balance. Terms of this deal were not disclosed.
BuddyMedia launched its own ad network for social-network applications in April.
Right now, social advertising is the talk of the town in New York because of the Web 2.0 Expo this week and the Interactive Advertising Bureau-sponsored Advertising Week next week. There's still plenty of unproven idealism surrounding the niche, and deal-making like this doesn't assuage occasional industry concerns about social advertising's effectiveness. But analytics will likely be a boost for SocialMedia's clients--if they get statistical hints that their Facebook applications are having a legitimate impact, their confidence in the new medium could get a little less shaky.
Photobucket, the massive photo-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media last year, has partnered with Scrapblog, a start-up that lets members create online scrapbooks.
Through the partnership, whose financial terms were not disclosed, Scrapblog's drag-and-drop application will be available within Photobucket so that users can work their Photobucket albums into scrapbooks and then share or embed them on the Web. Starting in September, printed versions of Scrapblog scrapbooks will be available for purchase.
"Scrapbooks have traditionally been an important part of how people have kept and shared memories offline for many years, and bringing that capability online to Photobucket gives users even more options for enhancing their lives and expressing themselves digitally," Photobucket president Alex Welch said in a release. "We are excited to partner with Scrapblog, and be the first photo and video Web site to integrate a digital-scrapbooking feature directly into the site, making it easy, convenient, and accessible to everyone."
Coral Gables, Fla.-based Scrapblog, founded in 2006, has created scrapbook-related marketing campaigns for brands ranging from Carnival Cruise Lines to the ABC television series Ugly Betty (parent company Disney is an investor). Longworth Venture Partners led Scrapblog's Series A venture round in March 2007.
