Update: A representative for Bing tells WebPronews the "Twitter monetization news will not result in sponsored results appearing in Bing results."
Original Article: Microsoft announced today that Bing now pulls in tweets from Twitter in real-time, in a way that somewhat resembles Google’s real-time search feature.
Twitter and Bing integration is not exactly new. Last summer, Bing began including tweets from certain people in some searches, though it was anything but real-time. Later in the fall, Bing announced a deal with Twitter giving Bing access to tweets. Bing set up Bing.com/twitter, where users could search Twitter in real-time from Bing, but it was not integrated to Bing’s regular search results.
Now Bing has introduced its "social search" feature, which Bing’s Lawrence Kim describes:
Bing now pulls in social content generated on Twitter to surface the most relevant updates within seconds of a breaking news event. From people on the ground tweeting about what’s happening around them to users sharing interesting news links while browsing at home, the Twitterati can be significantly faster than traditional media outlets in picking up information on breaking events. Further, the Twitterati also picks up information that the traditional media outlets often ignore – such as the latest viral video being shared online.
At Bing, we analyze what topics are generating the most interest on Twitter to bring you the latest and most interesting content. So if you wanted to find out more information on the just-announced Kin phone from Microsoft, you’ll be able to discover it on Bing as the announcement was being made and journalists started tweeting about the product.
There’s no word yet on whether or not Bing will integrate Twitter’s newly announced Promoted Tweets in its social search feature.
Bing is however, also using Twitter data to show users the most popular shared links for navigational queries. If a user looks for the most popular celebrity news on TMZ, for example, they’ll see which links from TMZ people are sharing the most on Twitter.
The new features are being tested with a small subset of Bing users and queries at this point, but the company says they will become widely available in the U.S. soon.
By the way, here’s how Bing ranks tweets.