B I N G

Bing is currently trying to make a deal with Twitter and Facebook so it can get the real-time status updates and tweets on it's search results. Personally, as an ardent user of both twitter and facebook, I don't like the fact that my privacy would be compromised. I know there are settings in which you can privatize your account but even so, I think it is going a tad overboard with Bing trying have this deal. Why not just use the search functions in both of the actual sites? Perhaps this is beneficial to those who do not have twitter or facebook accounts. Well then, if they are so keen on finding out certain people's tweets or status' why not just sign up for an account. Crimes committed through Internet social media networks are alarmingly increasing: sexual predators on MySpace, robberies through Facebook, stalkers, etc etc.

To put a temporary halt on my opinions and to answer the questions for class, if this deal does go through I do believe it would impact the market share for Google. Since Twitter and Facebook are immensely popular social networking sites, I think a lot of people would utilize this function on Bing to search for whatever they want/need. Would Twitter and Facebook benefit from this deal? Like I said before, if this happens, people will not necessarily need to sign up for accounts on these sites to search for/look at other people's accounts. Wouldn't that be a disadvantage for them? But also, having this search function may increase exposure for both these sites and encourage more people to sign up.

As a website manager, if this deal is successful, I'd probably want to build a website that has real-time update functions. So if people search for something, there is a chance that my website will pop up on the results as well. If Bing does incorporate this function, as a website manager, I would want a separate search page- one for the real-time results and one for just the normal results. That way, my webpage has less of a chance of being smothered and hidden by all the other updates/tweets that may contain the same search words as my webpage.

There are so many people who update or tweet about useless, pointless things. Let's say you wanted to search for a really insightful, meaningful update about something you are thinking of or a certain current event. I'd say there are loads of useless, spamming updates/tweets and it'll be a headache to sift through the results, trying to find one decent update. Is this really a good idea...?