22 October 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland Head of Media Content

Bing shows social stripes with Facebook and Twitter search updates

Microsoft has announced that Bing will be integrating Twitter and Facebook updates into search results.

The news is not entirely unexpected, but search rivals such as Google are sure to be carefully watching to see how popular the move proves to be with users.

According to Advertising Age, the deals were announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where Bing pipped Google to the post to reveal its new social media ties. Earlier in the month, bigmouthmedia reported that Twitter was in advanced integration talks with both search engine hopefuls - but Bing's new deals are not exclusive and this meant that Google was able to also secure a deal with the microblogging site.

While Bing already made headlines with its use of Twitter updates in its search results, the new partnership will see the entire Twitter feed integrated in its results. There is no comment over whether this will result in a revenue stream for Twitter or not.

Users will be able to hunt for tweeted information at Bing.com/Twitter. The search engine will be filtering results and assigning value to certain tweets or twitterers on a variety of criteria.

The Guardian reports that Marissa Mayer, the vice-president of search and user experience at Google was pleased to announce the Moutain View's additional deal with the microblogging site. She said: "We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results,"

"We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."

The inclusion of Facebok and Twitter updates are sure to change the search sphere in future, but it is yet to be seen how the user will react to the proliferation of real time results and user generated content in their searches.

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