First, there’s Bing.  Bing Twitter is Microsoft’s take on the up to the second data stream of tweets.  It would simply be another Twitter search, except Bing has analyzed the data stream to eliminate a lot of redundant tweets, and you can select a ‘best match’ option rather than the default ‘latest’ post option to try to boost relevancy. Bing also gives you two sets of results, first the most recent tweets themselves in chrono order, and then the most popular links within tweets.

Bing says they evaluate the authority of tweets by looking at the number of followers of the post plus the retweet pattern.  This is a beta release, so it isn’t always right on target, but it’s an interesting addition to the ever-growing world of search.

I think it helps a lot with some of the kinds of searches I might do, like reputation management for a customer.  For a really thorough and typically good treatment of this, see Danny Sullivan’s post at Search Engine Land.

Then Google makes a splashy announcement almost within a day that it has reached an agreement with Twitter to use its data in real time search results.  Google hasn’t yet rolled out how it will integrate that data into search results — might be a separate index, like Microsoft — but I think it will  have some kind of user option built into it, probably in the ‘show options’ like you have for blogs, video and so forth.  Then again, that’s probably way too easy for Google.  What will they think of next?

On that note, there’s Danny Sullivan again, this time gushing about Google Social Search:  I don’t see a lot of things that make me go “wow,” that’s useful. This did.

Google has yet another beta product here (and I do not know where in the world they get the ideas for all the stuff they roll out, but they are busy!).  The basic idea of Google Social Search is to extend the personalization of your search results by linking them to your networks of friends.

To make it work, you need a Profile set up on your Google account.  On that profile, if you list your social network accounts (especially Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — aka the big 3), Google will recognize them and — to the extent they are visible — filter your search results through your friends.  Somehow.  I haven’t seen it done yet, but I’m looking forward to it!

Now that search bar in the upper right corner of your FB page takes you to a new search page where a great array of results wait for your browsing pleasure.  This is keyword-driven (like all search) so it’s not too useful if you have a really complex query (use Aardvark for those!), but if you’re looking for something more common, like ‘restaurant’ or ‘music’, you’ll get lots of ideas.

The image below is from my own search for ‘music’, filtered by ‘events’.  I found a lot of concerts advertised on Facebook!

Facebook's New Search Interface

On the downside, when I tried to find ‘music san luis obispo’ there were no results. Come on SLO musicians!  Get with it and get on Facebook.

This is another example of Facebook’s huge advantage of having all that profile information from hundreds of millions of users and businesses.  You couldn’t usefully add a search capability to a small network (not enough results possible), but when you have this kind of scale, it becomes valuable.  The network effect means that FB will continue to grow because it has these capabilities.  The big get bigger.

I wonder if there will come a point where the personal connection people feel with their networks gets so diluted that the information in the network overall begins to degrade, in quality and/or in quantity.  In a way, that’s what happened to MySpace.  Thinking of the goose that laid the golden eggs here.

Techcrunch has the blogosphere roiling with its publication of internal Twitter docs that somehow just showed up in the inbox one day.  This amazing post is LONG with detailed meeting notes about everything from employee retention (yawn) to deals with Google or Microsoft (hmmm) to the threat from Facebook (this one caught my eye).

As the Twitter folks see it, Facebook can begin to mimic the Tweet by making its status updates public (through user option), displayed via the same kinds of tools as Tweetdeck and the like.  Or maybe literally in Tweetdeck types of tools modified to also show Facebook status.  And so forth — Techcrunch comments that Facebook is already moving toward this in recent changes.

Now I want to add Aardvark into the scramble.  Recently out of beta, Aardvark is a real-time search tool based on matching your complex query (the more complex the better, not like a search engine) with another person who can answer it.  This is done through an algorithm that analyzes your query, matches it to the stated expertise or interests of people in the network, and sends the query to the best probable matches through email or IM.

The information Aardvark analyzes to make the matches between question and answer comes from Facebook.  There should be a pause before that ‘Facebook’ with a drumroll.  Aardvark’s service is not warmed over Twitter — it is different.  But it matches the real-time search features of Twitter very well, only better because it finds people who could not possibly be in your personal network, or the networks of your friends, or of their friends… OK, I’m getting carried away but you get the point.  It is one component of the Twitter functionality, and it depends on Facebook.

Twitter search is different — it would help you find a laptop cable at a trade show, whereas Aardvark would not — and with Twitter you learn things you didn’t even know you wanted to know (what the Twitter folks call ‘discovery’) and that’s important.

But Facebook is evolving, and sharing its users’ personal data with Aardvark (by permission only) is one way to move into Twitter space.  This personal data, btw, is a crucial advantage of Facebook.  It’s going to be interesting to watch these models converge, clash and compete.  Again, this is going to be good for us users.

This will change the results a searcher will see if they have this feature turned on.  The SEO world gets a little more complicated all the time, doesn’t it?  This should help people get better search results if they know how to use it.  That’s another issue.

Read about it from Googler Rachel Garb.