While Google may be looking into making Twitter searchable, Microsoft has already started implementing its own real-time search into Bing.

At present it’s a fairly limited offering, indexing “some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres”.

It seems that you can only search for the latest tweets from certain people who have been indexed, using syntax such as “[name] Twitter” or “[name] Tweets” or “@[name]”.

As a concept, it’s a good start though I’m not interested in using any search engine to find anyone’s latest tweets — I use Twitter or one of its desktop clients for that. read more

Twitter has applied to trademark the word “Tweet” says the official blog. They think it is an obvious attachment to the Twitter brand, but say they have no intentions of going after users of the word.

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

That’s good, I think. It is also good that they come clean and say that they are “a bit more wary” about the use of Twitter in projects. So cancel that Twitter Herald project and find another name, you might get in trouble otherwise. read more

Twitter has added a couple of neat features to your Following List interface. Now you can see the most recent tweets, a straight list as before, and more with a contextual menu to the side. read more

Flickr has finally added support for Twitter, which means that you can send uploaded photos to Twitter using the Blog This link in the top right of the photo page on Flickr, or you can email photos directly to your Twitter stream. The URL gets shortened with the flic.kr URL shortening service, so you’ll see exactly what you’ll click on, and it certainly seems to work well enough. read more

Twitter is more than just status updates

It seems from talking to lots of people there is still some considerable confusion around how Twitter @replies work. The problem is that @replies are a vital part of Twitter, they make it more about discussion than “status updates”. read more

Mashable has announced the launch of MashDeck, a strangely familiar looking Twitter app using Adobe Air. You recognize it because it is basically TweetDeck, the popular Twitter app, rebranded for Mashable, which basically means some minor design tweaks (for the worse if you ask me), and a default Mashable search column. TweetDeck previously did a Blink-182 branded version, so maybe ReadWriteWeb is onto something here: Is this the business model?

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is dominating the web right now. TMZ broke the story, went down under the strain, but is back up now. Meanwhile, various sites and tweets talk about Twitter getting some fail whales and massive traffic spikes, which isn’t all that surprising after all. The King of Pop has been in the limelight for so long, it is just huge. At a time, the trending topics on Twitter was more or less exclusively dominated by his death, with people forgetting all about Iran for a little while at least.

People rush to Jackson’s Facebook page, currently sporting 880 991 fans, but expect that number to grow tremendously. Facebook overall is performing sluggishly now, possibly due to the artist’s death. It will be interesting to follow up on traffic spikes and surges later on. read more

The International Olympic Committee’s reluctant acceptance of bloggers and social media’s participation in sharing information from the Olympic Games has been challenged by Reuters’ editor-in chief David Schlesinger.

Speaking to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission, he said that it was now not possible to control how established and new media disseminated information.

“The old means of control don’t work. The old categories don’t work. The old ways of thinking don’t work. We need to come to terms with that,” he said.

“Fundamentally, the old media won’t control news dissemination in the future. And organisations can’t control access using old forms of accreditation any more.” read more

Well-known high street furniture store Habitat has issued an apology (via its PR company, via a social media blog) for its misuse of popular hashtags on Twitter over the past few days.

Among fair game for whoever was posting on behalf of @TwitterUK were the hashtags #Iran, #iPhone and #Apple – all completely unrelated to any marketing efforts the retail chain was pushing on the service.

The tweets, which unsurprisingly caused quite a backlash from users, have since been removed. read more

It seems that not a week goes by without something interesting happening within Steve Jobs playground (i.e. the iTunes App store). The same could be said for the numerous twitter apps, especially now with Tweetdeck hitting the scene (which TechCrunch has a glorious review of).

While most Tweet apps like Tweetie, Twitterfon, etc. support image uploading (via services like Twitpic and TweetPhoto.com), Twittelator goes one step further by allowing users to attach an audio message or even video to their tweet, a feature that may not make the mullahs in Iran very happy. read more