Microsoft has officially started using Twitter. When I checked just before writing this, they have around 4000 followers. But there are only 3 tweets so far and the last one is updated 7 hours ago.

Url: http://twitter.com/microsoft

It’s Twitter day at Microsoft, apparently. Not only did the software giant announce that it would start adding tweets to its Bing search results, the company actually started officially using Twitter today.

To be clear, Microsoft had a rather large presence on Twitter before through its various departments/products/services, but now it’s using the main  /microsoft account to tweet. The account is being run by its corporate communications team, consisting of four people.

Source: Washington Post

Microsoft has also decided to include tweets from selected profiles in its Bing search results.

Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Source: Bing blog

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Interface

The home page is simple with a  changing background (I think, it is changing daily – but it is nice).  The search result page  is almost identical to google showing sponsored links in right. But Bing has a three column layout and the related search is showing in the left sidebar instead of showing in the footer. It is unlike Google, and in my opinion, it is more usable because you don’t need to scroll down to see the related searches.

Also there is a preview of search results which will be shown on mouse over. It is a good concept. You can see a preview of the page before going to the actual page and it is more easy to find what you really want.

Search database

Bing finds only fewer (most of the time, less than half) results for any given keyword. For eg: I tried to searchfor “New Delhi” and it produced around 21 million results but Google produced more than 50 million results. But the results are incrementing; yesterday it was just around 20 million – within 1 day, another 1 million results are added.

Search Relevency

Most of the time Bing produced relevent and similar results as Google. (For eg: try searching “aamir khan” – both search engines produced almost identical results).

Search options

As expected, Bing doesn’t provide as much options as Google. But basic boolean, language, country, domain search etc are available and works well.

Image search

Image search is excellent with lot of options (Please click on the screenshot). The listing is also nice with different sizes of thumbnail options.

Video Search

Video search is also excellent with lot of options. You can search by length of the video, sreen size, resolution, source etc. Another excellent feature is, the video will start to play on mouse over. So you don’t need to visit the site for checking what video it is.

Conclusion

Though it won’t be a google killer, Bing is a good search engine and good alternative to google. Image & Video search are excellent with some nice concepts. Through time, it may add more features (it is still in Beta) and search options. It is surely far better than Yahoo search. Reports says that Microsoft upped its search share to 11.1 percent last week, as compared to 9.1 percent the prior week. Also it is rumored that, the launch of Microsoft’s Bing search engine has so upset Google co-founder Sergey Brin that he has top engineers working on “urgent upgrades” to Google’s service.  [Source: CNET]

It is a good start by Microsoft and we’ll get a more clear picture in the coming weeks.

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