I see your Twitter, I raise you Facebook

Bing partner with Twitter and Facebook

Just as Microsoft thought they had a social leg up on their biggest rival Google, they come back with an announcement that sees Google partner with Twitter less than 24 hours later.

Yesterday, Microsoft told the world (albeit a little quietly) that they had agreed a deal with Twitter to integrate real time search results into Bing. Twitter is arguably the hottest property online right now and real time search is what both Google and Bing are lacking. The fact that Microsoft had beaten Google to a deal with Twitter meant things were starting to get really interesting in the world of search, and that there might actually be a reason to defer to Bing from Google.

But Google announced soon afterwards they too have partnered with Twitter and will soon start including Public Tweets within search results. Bing does have a head start in this race, but you can count on Google to catch up fairly quickly.

These actions spearhead a race between the two search giants to incorporate new real time features into their search engines and make them more relevant to everyday search. As All Things Digital reported today, Google plans to let consumers buy and listen to music from its search-results page.

Left in Bing's corner is Facebook, a deal that was done in October 2007 saw Microsoft buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook, valuing the company at a staggering USD $15 billion. So while Google have dipped a toe in the water by rushing through a partnership with Twitter, Microsoft does have the upper hand in this arena as they also have a search partnership with Facebook.

The coming months will be interesting to see how the two search giants perfect real time search and develop new features. You should see Google launch Twitter search in Google labs in the next few weeks. Twitter search is already available on Bing in test mode and you can see a good example displaying tweets from Ryan Seacrest or visit bing.com/twitter.

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