Microsoft said that it did not plan to index all of Twitter and make it searchable, just “some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres” such as former vice president Al Gore.<\/p>\n
Twitter is seen by some technology analysts as the next frontier in the field of Web search because of the real-time nature of the messages from its users.<\/p>\n
Twitter’s real-time stream of messages of 140-character-or-less is not currently searchable on Google, the dominant Web search engine.<\/p>\n
Twitter does provide a search feature of its own, however, and a number of outside developers have also developed applications that allow users to sift through the messages on the site.<\/p>\n
Microsoft, in a blog post on Wednesday, said its efforts with Bing and Twitter were “an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results.”<\/p>\n
A search for “Al Gore” and “Twitter,” for example, brings up the latest messages, known as “tweets,” from the former vice president, a link to his Twitter stream and the possibility to “see more tweets.”<\/p>\n
“We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time,” Microsoft said. “We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets.”<\/p>\n
Microsoft replaced its previous search engine with Bing in late May in a bid to compete with search market leader Google and number two Yahoo!<\/p>\n
Web analytics firm StatCounter said Wednesday that Microsoft had increased its share of the search market in the United States in June but still lags behind Google and Yahoo!<\/p>\n
StatCounter said Microsoft carved out an 8.23% share of the US search market in June, up from 7.21% in April and 7.81% in May.<\/p>\n
Yahoo!’s share of the search market was 11.04% in June, up from 10.99% in May but down from 11.27% in April.<\/p>\n
Google continued to dominate the search market with a 78.48% share in June, down slightly from 78.72% in May and 79.07% in April.<\/p>\n