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Microsoft has set up a Twitter account called @MicrosoftHelps and aims to provide Windows 7 customer support on the hot micro-sharing service, writes Sarah Perez over at Channel 10.

The account has been around for a week or so but hasn’t been met with much attention so far. That’s a shame, because I honestly think it’s really interesting to see Microsoft set up a customer service channel on Twitter, much like Best Buy recently amazed me with its @Twelpforce endeavors.

According to Perez, the company even talked to Best Buy to learn more about what it could do on Twitter.

The new Twitter account is English only and will initially focus solely on trying to support Twitter users who have questions about or issues with Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7, which is being debuted all around the world today. It might be expanding it to include more Microsoft products later on.

Microsoft reportedly also said that it doesn’t expect to be able to answer all queries at all times, but that’s only logical. Judging from the background image on the account, there are four people managing the account at this point.

Rumor has it Apple is considering setting up a similar channel on Twitter to assist people.
Nah, just kidding.

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After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing’s Twitter search is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well.

While financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, full access to Twitter’s data stream is very valuable to both search engines. Depending on how much Twitter was able squeeze out of Google and Bing for these licensing deals, they are likely to provide its first major source of revenue. (Imagine, if they have to pay by the Tweet).

Tweets and other realtime data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And it’s hard to beat millions of people Tweetng out their thoughts—the “pulse of the planet,” if you will—for realtime information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant.

Up until now, they had to try to index Twitter’s site selectively by concentrating on high-profile Twitterers like celebrities. Twitter wouldn’t let their robots gobble up and index every Tweet because its servers wouldn’t be able to take that kind of pounding. But Twitter didn’t just want to hand over the feed of all of its public Tweets (the firehose) to the search engines without getting paid for it either.

Now that Google and Bing are getting the firehose, it could have a big impact on search results. For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn’t a Tweet.

For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about “healthcare reform.” If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking. But Google and Bing can use the firehose as a rich source of signals to mine and then blend back into regular search results.

Of course, Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results. And how the search engines display them and rank them will also determine how relevant their results are. Here is where it gets interesting because realtime search is a hard problem that has not yet been solved. Do you show the most recent, random Tweets first, or the ones with the most authority? And how do you rank a Tweet? We already have PageRank, but what we now need is StreamRank.

Many startups are tackling this problem, as is Twitter itself. And now Google and Bing can try their hand at finding the most important bits of data in the firehose. The results should be a more relevant, faster feedback loop between data appearing on the Internet and the search engines finding it.

Photo credit: Flickr/ZeroOne

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Well there is no denying that today was an interesting one when it comes to the world of search and the real time web. From everything I have read so far today everyone seems to be of the opinion that the two deals Twitter made today are pretty important and I would have to agree with that assessment.

Microsoft

Other than Twitter I would have to say that the big winner of today’s announcements definitely has to be Microsoft. Not only did they ink a deal with Twitter but they also made one with Facebook as well. While Microsoft’s Bing search already has a beta page up for searching Twitter it will be a couple of months apparently before their work with Facebook will be available.

The fact that Microsoft was able to have even a beta result page ready for the announcement today could prove to be very important for the company. As it stands Google won’t have anything available for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months – depending on who you talk to.

This is a golden window for Microsoft and Bing because it will give them time to review and fine tune how the results are made available during which they can try and capitalize on being the only major search provider searching the real time web. While they won’t see a rush of new users to the search service it could definitely cause more than a few to start using Bing on a more regular basis.

Google

While the web’s search darling has announced inking a deal with Twitter for access to the fire hose the fact is that they are still some time from having anything people can actually use. I find it interesting that Microsoft was able to get a beta Twitter search up for today’s announcement but Google wasn’t. This would mean that Microsoft has to have had access to that hose prior to Google which goes to suggest that Microsoft has a better grasp on the importance of Twitter and real time search.

This isn’t to suggest that Google won’t have a good product when they do bring it to the table. On the contrary I fully expect them to have an interesting take on how real time search results should be handled. I just would have expected given the current opinion of Microsoft being a stick in the mud enterprise oriented company and Google being the do no evil Web 2.0 darling perpetual beta company that they would have been first in this little skirmish.

The fact that Microsoft beat them at this point with a usable real time search product doesn’t mean that the tables have turned. Google isn’t going to lose any sleep or long time users over the deal but Microsoft may have just been given a golden opportunity to show they have a very capable product that will win some folks over.

Twitter

You have to admit this was a pretty cool deal that Twitter managed to pull off without anything really leaking out about it. Being able to ink 2 non-exclusivity deals with serious enemies who are always looking to one up each other and nothing gets out almost right up until the announcements – nicely done.

While I am sure that Twitter will be banking some serious cash out of these deals I am sure it is nothing that would pale by comparison to an exclusive deal. This has me wondering if it was Twitter that made the non-exclusivity a requirement of even talking about making any deals. If so kudos to the Twitter team for making some good money but at the same time making sure the Twitter stream remained neutral.

Overall

We are the winners here – make no mistake. Microsoft gets a chance to prove to new users that they have a better search, Google gets to index even more of the world’s info only in real time, and Twitter gets to probably put some serious cash in the bank and possibly start living up to its valuation. In the end though it us the users who will ultimately benefit.

Twitter FTW.

Related posts:

1. Google Announces Twitter Search Deal
2. BREAKING: Microsoft’s Bing and Twitter search results live [Screenshots]
3. Yet another Twitter search company to go public June 18

Hot on the heals of the Bing/ Twitter search deal this morning, Google has joined the party and announced that they’re going to offer Twitter search as well.

According to a post from Google’s Marissa Mayer, the search giant “is very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.”

“We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

What perhaps isn’t clear is yet is exactly how the Tweets will appear in Google; whether this is going to be a standalone product like Google Blog Search, or some how merged into normal search results. If the latter, how will real time streaming fit into a static Google search results page?

Related posts:

1. Who should worry about Twitter’s search? It ain’t Google.
2. Google already has a real-time search – of sorts
3. Microsoft Announces Facebook Search/Advertising Deal

At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer unexpectedly came on stage to unveil a new product. She first announced that Google has also reached a deal with Twitter, which she wrote a blog post about earlier in the day, following the announcement that Bing and Twitter had done the same thing.

But Mayer had more to share. There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people.

Keys to this type of search will be local information as well as image searches, as Mayer and another Googler showed off today on stage.

Mayer didn’t say it, but it’s probably safe to assume that this will only work for networks where the data is open. That means that you’re unlikely to be able to use your Facebook social graph for these web search results.

This will launch in the next few weeks. This experiment will be opt-in for now, Mayer says.

John Battelle asked Mayer how Twitter would work with Google. Mayer said that it will be integrated into regular results. A key to this functionality will be when articles and blog posts haven’t been written yet about breaking items.

When pressed, Mayer would not disclose the details of the Twitter deal, but she did say the keyword, “financial terms,” as in, money changed hands. This is in contrast to the deal Facebook struck with Bing, in which no money changed hands, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said earlier today. “We’re not trying to make money on data,” she said.

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Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO sat down to talk with Federated Media’s John Battelle.

Sandberg’s key point through all the questions was clear: Facebook is all about sharing. But it’s different from a competitor like Twitter because you can use Facebook to easily share with one person, just your high school friends, or the world.

Sandberg also noted that Facebook sees a shift going on from an information economy to a social economy. This can be thought of a move from everyone just using Google to get information, to using social services like Facebook and Twitter.

She spoke at length about the importance of Facebook’s development community, both the Platform and Facebook Connect. She expanded on some data Facebook VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, gave earlier, noting that Facebook now has over a million developers working on its platform. And 250 applications now have a least a million users each.

Sandberg alsp spoke a bit more about the new Bing deal, which Microsoft only mentioned briefly while announcing the Twitter deal. She made it clear that the data Facebook will share with Bing is only the data that users opt to make public.

She also noted that no money changed hand in the deal. “We’re not trying to make money on data,” she said. While Microsoft would not comment on the deal with Twitter, Microsoft’s Qi Lu did imply it was a deal that involved money changing hands.

Here’s a chart from Mary Meeker’s talk yesterday at Web 2.0 Summit that shows how time spent on sutes like Facebook is going up.

Below find my live notes (paraphrased):

JB: So earlier we saw the Bing announcement, but we

SS: We’re announcing today that we’re working with Microsoft to give them a feed of our updates that are open to the public. In the Bing search results you’ll see all data that users make public.

JB: So when will that be in Google?

SS: Oh you almost got me. Nothing to announce at this time.

JB: So Facebook is profitable now. That’s something you must be proud of. How did you do it?

SS: Yeah we knew that was going to happen. We think the numbers are finally showing the promise of advertising on the web. It’s no longer a one-way communication that you blast to people. Facebook is where you are your authentic self of the web, and marketers love that. We’re not only profitable but cash flow positive as well.

JB: What’s the date of the IPO?

SS: Oh, we’re announcing that later (laughs). Nothing to announce now.

JB: How important have online ads been to scale the business?

SS: Really important, we’re international now with it. We sell directly and we have a platform, both are really important for it.

JB: It seems like the referral system is shifting. It’s not just about Google searches anymore, it’s Facebook and Twitter now. Did you notice that when you were still at Google? Is that why you shifted to Facebook? Should Google be worried?

SS: What we see at Facebook is that there’s a shift going on from information economy to the social web. Google will continue to be important, the search for sites, but we believe in the wisdom of friends. That’s how I learned not to take my kids to see Where The Wild Things Are.

JB: What about Aardvark which using IM and other things to answer questions? How do you manage the tension between the things you do in house between what the development community creates? Like Aardvark.

SS: The developer community is very important to us. We don’t try to build everything our users want to use. We do the core technology. We have over a million developers. 250 applications now have at least a million users each. We don’t care how people share using Facebook, it just matters that we’re the technology to connect.

JB: What is Facebook’s unique proposition versus Google or Microsoft in competing for the social graph?

SS: No cake is ever baked on the Internet – we have to be vigilant. Facebook is about where you are on the web. You put up your most personal information. We’re the only place that you can share with one person, just your high school friends, or the world. And we can scale, as Mike talked about earlier.

JB: Let’s talk about Facebook Connect. Give a quick overview. Is it now better than it was when it launched?

SS: It’s an extension of our platform. So if you’re on a third party site, you can log in there with your FB credentials, and share back information to Facebook. I used to have meetings with people who want communities on their sites, but every site can do that. We make it easy to add your friends which you already have on Facebook.

JB: How much more will you be able to do? Not everyone is my Facebook friend. Will the core Facebook funcitonality come outside of Facebook too?

SS: Our goal is to help you share the most you can both on Facebook and off.

JB: Facebook Connect looks like a potential Trojan Horse for a monetization service, like an AdSense like product. Is that in the plan?

SS: Not now. We’re asked that all the time, and it’s a good question, but we’re not focused on that right now. Right now we want Connect to be easier to use, an work with partners for deep integrations.

JB: Are developers asking for monetization through Connect? How do you keep developers happy?

SS: There are different types of developers and sites that use us. Some are big like Huffington Post or ABC News. ABC News used Facebook Connect when Michael Jackson died – users talked through Connect. It’s good for us and them. But it’s not about monetization, it’s more about making it easier to interact. On the Platform side, Mark Pincus/Zygna is a great exmple.

JB: Glad you brought up Zynga, they make their money through PayPal. Will you do your own payment system?

SS: There’s a lot of speculation about that, but I won’t speak to that. But we do have payments already on the site for buying ads, for example. We’re also allowing people to buy virtual goods with Facebook Credits. We’re doing testing with a few developers to take payments in their apps. That’s all I’ll say.

JB: When Ev Williams of Twitter was here, I asked if he was flattered that FB is more like Twitter now. Was that planned?

SS: Change is in the DNA of Facebook. That existed long before Twitter. We think Twitter is impressive – they’ve built something important. The world is shifting towards realtime sharing. When we launched status updates, no one got it. Now people are realizing Twitter is important. That’s a global movement. Like Evan said, there’s room for more than one player in that.

JB: The scale is really different too, right?

SS: We do 45 million status updates a day, from 30 million individuals. That’s a lot.

JB: Has the vision behind Facbeook shifted?

SS: I don’t think it has. It’s always been about helping people connect. Certainly we build new things that change the service. We’re evolving.

JB: So you were in the Treasury during the Clinton administration. How do you think the Valley is doing at having a conversation with D.C.?

SS: Silicon Valley is an amazing force for our country. We’re changing the world. I think our impact on policy is not as profound. Other industries are better at that. Globalization, immigration policies for us to hire, we as an industry have more to do for those things. They’re important for all of us – free capital and labor. We can do better.

Audience Q&A Session

Q: Aren’t you moving more in the direction of strangers with your changes?

SS: Privacy has always been at the center of what we do. Facebook allows you to differentiate who you want to share with. A lot of people, or just a few. And now you can share with the public. It’s all about user choices. They need to be more granular. Should this status update be for everyone, or just for my friends? We’re still working on it.

JB: Yahoo, AOL, and MySpace are all moving towards content. Facebook isn’t doing that now. Will that change?

SS: No, that’s not going to change. We’re about sharing, our content comes from users. We’re an important referer of content. We will not hire an editorial staff and do our own.

Q: Any advice for marketers who want to use Facebook?

SS: Do it quick and iterate. Facebook is much more iterative, it’s two way marketing. Make a Page and update it.

Q: Can you imagine a future where Google and Facebook work together?

SS: I can imagine a lot of things, but still nothing to announce. More broadly, are we working with lots of partners for sharing information? Yes. We have an open platform, we want to work with a lot of people.

JB: That was not a “no.” (laughs)

Q: Does Google have to have an agreement to access your APIs? What’s with the Bing deal?

SS: The Bing agreement is giving them a feed of our “everyone” data. No money exchanged hands. We’re not trying to make money on data.

Q: What about older people now using Facebook?

SS: We want everyone to use Facebook. It started in college, but we’ve grown quickly. The fastest growing group is over 35 now in the U.S. The great thing is that Facebook is personal for everyone.

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We received a number of tips early this morning that the majority of web servers at Twitter was exposing server and load-balancer status information to the public. The status page, which are an (often default) option in the open source Apache web server dump an output of all connections and state information for a particular server. The information is used by administrators to monitor servers, and the pages are often either removed entirely or locked down to prevent the information from being used for nefarious purposes.

At some point in the past 24 hours (I would more accurately guess 22 hours 28 minutes and 4 seconds ago, based on the status page itself), the Twitter web servers introduced a misconfiguration to expose this information to the public. The page includes overall server statistics along with every HTTP requests currently being handled by that server, with the full request URL. The server status page is usually accessed by requesting /server-status for a web server. In the case of Twitter, this exposure allows anybody to see requests that sometimes rely on being secret to remain secure, such as oAuth keys, which are used to authorize applications to access Twitter accounts.

News of the pages being open spread quickly through Twitter, with some calling it “great transparency” while others recognizing it for what it is – a little too much transparency, and unintentional. Twitter were very quick to respond and blocked all access to the page, and the vast majority of the information found is purely informational and can be deduced through other means. Your Twitter account is probably safe again, but that doesn’t mean we can’t geek out while we get a sneak peak at what Twitter looks like behind the curtain.

Screenshot of one such page below with some of the information cut out.

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Mere hours after today’s announcement that Twitter would now be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Google has annouced that it too will include Twittter updates in its own search results. Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search Products and User Experience, writes in a company blog post:

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

It’s worth noting that while Bing’s Twitter search is live today, it sounds like Google will be working Twitter’s data into its search results over the next few months.

The next question is whether or not Google will get access to Facebook’s stream of real-time updates (Microsoft announced deals with both Twitter and Facebook at today’s Web 2.0 Summit). Neither of Microsoft’s deals with Twitter and Facebook are exclusive, which leaves the door open for Google to pair up with Facebook as well. But Google and Facebook have butted heads in the past. And Microsoft has a long history with Facebook: the company supplements Facebook’s search with Bing results, and it controls a small stake in the company after investing$240 million at a sky-high $15 billion valuation back in late 2007.

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A new Pew Internet And American Life Project study is being released today which reports that internet users on a whole are becoming more likely to update their statuses online (on social media networks). The report says that 19% of internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share updates
about themselves, or to see updates about others. When Pew surveyed the group in April of this year and in December 2008, 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Updating status online is a learned behavior for most internet users. It’s not something users tend to do naturally but these statistics shows that people are increasingly looking to Twitter, Facebook and other sites to update their status, which is definitely noteworthy. The full report is embedded below.

While the survey seems to revolve around Twitter, it’s unclear if respondents were referring to Twitter or Facebook because of the way the question was framed. The exact survey question was “Do you ever use Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?” Facebook has an incredibly large user base that posts status updates and a larger userbase than Twitter. In fact, Facebook was one of the first networks to coin the “status update.” I’m really curious what percentage of the “another service” category Facebook makes up. A representative for Pew said the question was open ended because they wanted capture the the general gist of “status updates” vs. seeing what the breakdown was of the origin of the updates. Twitter was chosen as the lead in the question because the currently, the “moment is ripe for Twitter as the exemplar of status updates.” This discounts of course that Facebook has more users and traffic than Twitter, but ok. UPDATE: Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg reported today that Facebook gets 45 million status updates per day.

The study also reveals some not-so-surprising stats. For example, the report claims that wireless access is an key factor in predicting whether someone uses Twitter or another status update service, with users who own and use a wireless internet device makes an internet more likely to Tweet or update their status. Or, that users with more internet-connected devices (computers, phones) are more likely to update their status or Tweet. Well, duh.

Under the heading, “younger internet users,” Pew’s document inconclusively addresses the whole age issue over Twitter users by reporting that users between the ages of 18 to 44 report rapid uptake of Twitter over the last nine months, whereas internet users ages 45 and older report slower adoption rates. For example, 37% of internet users age 18-24 use Twitter or “another service,” up from 19% in December 2008. Let’s be real here, the 18-44 demographic doesn’t adequately define “younger internet users.”

The report also indicated that Facebook users may be graying a bit. The median age of a Twitter user is 31, whereas the media age for Facebook, now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

What the study did not highlight is that increase in status updates (across all social networks, not just Twitter) is also attributed to the fact that these networks are steadily making it easier for users to post updates to multiple networks at once. MySpace recently launched a publish to Twitter feature, and Facebook launched a limited version and may be launching the full monty soon. And of course, web and mobile-based Twitter and Facebook clients like Tweetdeck, Tweetie and Seesmic also make it simpler for users to post status updates.

PIP_Twitter_Fall_2009 –

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The blogosphere has been all a twitter this morning with the news that Twitter has inked a deal with Microsoft and one is in the works with Google.

Thanks to a heads up from Robert Scoble on Twitter we just found out that the Twitter search on Bing has gone live. I am only now playing with it so I don’t a real reaction yet to the whole thing but here’s some screenshots of what is there for you to explore.

And of course what would a search be without a little vanity tossed in

Related posts:

1. Google Announces Twitter Search Deal
2. Microsoft Yahoo deal is a big win for Bing
3. Microsoft Bing: Nice Legs, Shame about the Name