Bing searches to include Twitter results

Microsoft has announced a new feature for its Bing search service, which will allow users to receive information on Twitter posts.

The new service generates results from thousands of "carefully selected" Twitter users, according to Microsoft, including its own employees, search experts, bloggers and personalities such as Al Gore.

"Today we are 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," wrote Sean Suchter, general manager at Microsoft's Search Technology Center, in a blog post.

"This includes tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere, like Danny Sullivan or [technology columnist] Kara Swisher, as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or [American Idol host] Ryan Seacrest."

Suchter added that the service currently offers a small sample of Twitter users, but will soon be extended.

"We are not indexing all of Twitter at this time, just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets," he said.

Twitter results will not appear automatically, but will require specific search terms, such as 'Kara Swisher Twitter', 'Kara Swisher Tweets' or '@karaswisher'.

However, V3.co.uk tried all of these variants and had no success with Twitter results, reaffirming comments posted in response to Suchter's blog that the addition to Bing has not yet reached the UK.

Microsoft has so far been unable to provide V3.co.uk with a UK launch date for the Twitter service. UK users are also still awaiting a full release of Bing; at present it is only available as a beta version.