Bing Renews Deal To Pull In Twitter Feed While Google Continues On Its Merry Google+ Way...
So the big news, at least in some circles, is that Bing and Twitter have re-upped their agreement to have Twitter feeds appear in real time searches on Bing. And only in this social media on steroids world we find ourselves in could two powerhouse entities - in this case Microsoft and Twitter, announce to the world a renewing of a partnership via such an heretofore unorthodox platform...
The above is an exchange between Bing, the Microsoft search engine and Twitter. Kind of refreshing to see two big companies say the hell with press releases, let's get the news out to the masses right away. Of course an official press release is surely coming but still, this kind of announcement made via social media is rather intriguing.
When pressed for details a Microsoft spokesperson would only say ""We are pleased to announce that we are extending our collaboration with Twitter. We are not sharing terms of the agreement."
Hmmmm...
But what about the whole ".... do bigger and better things" portion of the Bing tweet and the "... can't wait to see what comes next" portion of the Twitter tweet? What are we to glean from these rather ambiguous comments? Could it mean that changes are afoot for Twitter with Twitter being built directly into Bing results ala Facebook?
Microsoft and Tulalip
Could the "bigger and better" and "what comes next" have anything do with the recent accidental leaking of Microsoft's proposed new social media platform, Tulalip? As I wrote back in July, when I first reported of this potential new social media platform from Microsoft, '...it will (Tulalip) be worth keeping an eye on all this going forward as if nothing else, some of the "features" of Tulalip may find its way into Bing at some point.'
Once again... hmmm.
And What Of Google?
Well as you may know, Google and Twitter's agreement expired not long ago and as a result Google has temporarily shutdown its Realtime Search functionality. A representative from Google explained it this way... "Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future." And as for the loss of Twitter on Google search results... "While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that's publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google. As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed."
This is all very big news for Microsoft and fans of Bing, who already were capitalizing on their involvement with Facebook (they do own a small part of Facebook) by incorporating Facebook likes and friends' activities to create a personalized search experience. Now, they can also incorporate and integrate Twitter into their search results, which may be just enough reason for folks to start to move away from Google and head over to Bing.
Or this is all a sign of desperation on the part of Microsoft and Bing as they try "buy" their way into the world of social search?
Or this is a sign that Google believes that Google+ is about to take over the world of social media and social search?
I wanted an expert's opinion on all this so I tracked down Josh Spiegel, one of our Search Marketing Managers who appears to favor the latter rationale...
"This should tell everyone that Google is doubling-down on Google+ meaning if you're not already exploring the ins and outs of Google+, then you may be missing out on social search in Google going forward. The reason I say that is if Google is still offering social search but does not have partnerships with other social sites (Facebook, Twitter) they must be very confident that Google+ will be successful and will naturally provide it with all the resources it needs to succeed. Think about it, they're essentially saying we don't need Facebook and Twitter or any other social network because we know Google+ will be all we need."
What do you think?
Is this great news for Bing fans and will there now be more and more "Bingers", as it were, now that Bing has both Facebook and Twitter integrated into their search results?
Has Google overestimated Google+? Was it a mistake for them to not renew their agreement with Twitter?
Sources: searchengineland, thenextweb,The Star Group, Bing Continues To Add Social Media Features, Google Continues To Shrug Them Off