Microsoft Bing Search has integrated with twitter to add relevant tweets to search results. The will be a boon to improving user experiences around scenarios like real time news search where you will get the traditional articles and now the real time conversation around the stories.
This is a continuing pattern by Microsoft to integrate across content sources. They have already integrated in the social media space with Facebook and MySpace.
I’ve worked in several engagements already with large fortune 100 companies and the Bing team to provide integration with the enterprise customers who have relevant content to contribute to search optimization and get their content into the mainstream. This includes examples in the travel, consumer electronics, and recently recipes subject areas.
Microsoft has also launched the new “Dallas” content distribution network on their cloud platform. There has been great interest in companies that want to have their content hosted in the CDN to aid in exposure and B2B development. The power of the CDN, beside the scalability and reach of cloud computing, is that all the various types of data and integrated into a master data model so that searches across all the disparate content can be optimized and correlated. This brings and entirely new value proposition in terms of search, but also for companies and start-ups to build new solutions that have even a greater user experience in terms of the richness and diversity of content they can aggregate in the experience.
Microsoft annouced a 10-year deal with Yahoo on July 29th. Yahoo will use the Microsoft “BING” search engine for internet searching combined with advertising by the Microsoft AdCenter platform. Yahoo will continue to sell advertising on its own sites and on bing with retaining 88% of the revenue. It is a move that will give Yahoo ~$500M in annual revenues.
David Williams
David MS Blog 