Bing Teams Up With Twitter to Provide Tweet Searching

One of the greatest advantages of the Web is that it allows for universal access to all kinds of real-time information, unlike more traditional forms of media that tend to take a little longer to catch up. Unfortunately, it can take a little while for search engines to catch up, limiting the Web browser’s ability to find and access information on a real-time basis. In seeking to address this disparity, Microsoft has announced today at Web 2.0 that it is teaming up with Twitter to provide Bing search results for the ultra-popular micro-blogging. So now you can access the latest brain farts from all your favorite celebrity Twitterers quicker than ever.

To employ the search, one can use a popular topic–Bing uses the example of the recent balloon boy incident in Colorado–to search for what Twitter users are saying at any given moment. The search results will provide a list of the most recent tweets on the topic. You can keep the results page up and watch new tweets as they are typed down, or expand the page for more results. You can also click on “Best Match” for a more advanced form of indexing that ranks tweets based upon originality and number of followers of the poster. The new Twitter search will also provide search results with Twitter links further qualifying the content of each result, rather than a teaser caption (pictured above).

For those that rely on Twitter for daily news, gossip and analysis, the new search feature should be an intriguing way of accessing the latest content. You can try out the beta version at www.bing.com/twitter .