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Microsoft’s Bing continues to impress with its innovation ramp rate.
I’ve already appreciated the work Bing has done surfacing Twitter tweets in real-time and then putting Bing search results and Twitter content side by side with BingTweets.
The Bing team yesterday alerted us to Bing & Ping, a potential new Bing feature that lets users search for something, then share those results with other users through Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.
The feature looks just like any other “share feature” from Digg, Google Reader or any other Website that looks to let users trade content with others:
Microsoft is inviting users to sign up for an invitation to preview Bing & Ping here on Facebook.
However, users are already spotting things they don’t like. Jamie Thomson wants to know why Bing & Ping will let users share via Facebook and Twitter but not Windows Live. Others wonder if it will be used at all. Read more on TechMeme.
Interestingly, real-time search providers Collecta and OneRiot, which were indexing Twitter tweets months before Bing, already enable users to share search results, albeit in real time.
So you see the pattern emerging here. The Bing team is following these real-time search players quite closely. Coincidence? I think not.
This is the direction search is heading, at least if you believe the pundits who like to predict the next big thing. What’s interesting about this is Google seems lost at sea in the real-time consciousness search stream.
Moreover, as much as Google does quirky things with search results, such as the wonder wheel and Google Squared, social isn’t part of the search platform. Never has been.
Google followed Facebook into social with OpenSocial and Friend Connect and only a few weeks ago began letting users share Google Reader content via Facebook, Twitter, et al.
So why would anyone expect Google to enable sharing in search before anyone else? Google will do this, particularly if it catches on at Bing. But I’ve been writing for a few months now about how Google hasn’t joined the real-time search gang.
Why not start now before Bing and the startups pull too far ahead? That search crown is sitting mighty well now, but why risk its future by not offering something that seems to be becoming routine?