Twing? Beet? There may have to be a new word for the sound of Twitter results showing up on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Launched just last month, Bing has begun indexing popular Twitter feeds. This means that a search of the names of a few thousand famous people will bring up their Twitter feed on the results page in addition to the more standard search results. In an announcement about the new feature on the Bing blog last week, Microsoft said the tweets will be indexed based on popularity and profligacy of tweeting, and include technologists as well as more well-known names like Al Gore and Ryan Seacrest.
To compete with more established search engines like Google and Yahoo, which currently don’t have a similar Twitter feature, Bing has been running an aggressive campaign of advertisement, new features, and partnerships. Facebook recently announced that search on the social media site would be through Bing, and Bing formed a partnership with PayScale to appeal to those comparing jobs. Features like video searches, and travel-price prediction also add to Bing’s appeal, although it is currently far behind Google in market share.
The blog post mentioned that the current Twitter indexing plan is only a first step and could eventually include every person on Twitter. More immediate access to tweets, essentially real-time individual news updates, could be just what Bing needs to drown out the sound of its competitors’ success.