Bing + Twitter = ?

It seems that Microsoft, in an effort to become more relevant, has started adding Twitter posts to Bing search results. The results are not comprehensive, but rather based on those people who are considered to be "influential" because of their number of followers, etc. This is a deviation from other search engines and while I have to commend MS for doing something different, I'm not really sure if it's going to prove valuable or not.

The naysayers are likely to suggest that Twitter is another Internet fad that will eventually run its course. It's hard to argue that a large portion of what happens there is not banal and relatively useless to the the majority of the population. If Bing was indexing and returning everything Twitter had to offer, I cannot see much value add in it.

I think where they may be able to differentiate themselves is in the breaking news and real-time information space. Things like Twitter and Facebook updates have repeatedly proven themselves as a viable source to learn about the latest happenings in various parts of the world. While there is a certain level of media hype in recent stories, I can attest that the first place I heard about recent celebrity deaths was on Facebook. Now I don't necessarily think everyone needs to be up to the second on celebrity news, but the application could likely be transitioned to any subject. If Bing is able to get the algorithm right, they could end up as the de facto aggregation source of socialized news and that could end up being a very profitable business model.

FBI & Social Networking

In what may be proof that social networking is a becoming an even more avoidable part of everyone's life, TechCrunch reports that the FBI has set up shop on Facebook, Twitter and several other sites you may have heard a lot about recently. One can assume that the FBI already works relatively closely with the likes of these sites so I can't really help but wonder what their goal is in having a public presence. Are they attempting to attract new recruits? Are they trying to be as "in touch" as Barack Obama? Are they trying to scare away predators by being more obvious? Chances are the answer is a combination of all these things and several others I can't even dream up.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article comes as a quite from Jonathan Cox at the FBI: "We have a widget that works on MySpace, but nothing formal yet. Its a long vetting process and I have so many government rules to follow it would make your head spin. This is just the beginning though. I’ll keep you posted as things progress. Thanks.”

I'm lucky (and I guess that's debateable depending on who you ask) to work for a company that is not only in the private sector, but is also an internet/technology business. Not only am I fully ingrained in the latest and greatest sites out there, I feel like knowing it is necessary to do my job most effectively. I know a lot of people don't use the internet and its various technologies as much as I do, but I can't help but wonder who at the FBI is responsible for maintaining their sites/profiles. What sort of "government rules" do they have to follow and how much would they make me cringe and/or laugh? I'm guessing a lot of them weren't written for the likes of creating and maintaing profiles on Facebook.