Real-time search may (together with semantic and/or mobile search) be the next big thing; with some individuals putting out scores of public messages per day, we need a way to organize them. And now, Microsoft’s taken a step in the right direction by “bringing a bit of Twitter to Bing.”
On the Bing Community Search Blog, a post of that title announced, “[W]e’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.”
The post then continued, “[W]hen you search for these folks [sic] names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results.”
Mind you, the technology’s not perfect; Wil Wheaton‘s most recent tweet is actually not about tacos, and since it is more than seven hours old, it’s a little hard to understand how Bing’s missed it.
There are also the limitations of the feature’s user reach to consider (no John Cleese or Shaquille O’Neal?).
But this is still an interesting development that puts Bing ahead of its biggest competitors. More advances may be on the way, too, as the official Bing post stated, “We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search. We’d love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search.”
