Twiitter Bing vs. Google Wave

The partnership of Twitter and Bing to allow searching of Twitter "tweets" is interesting more for its conception that the way in which users will actually likely employ it. While Bing will undoubtedly see growth in their popularity as a result of the link, the actual benefits to people who use Bing will probably be marginal. The rationale given by Bing for the decision to offer closer integration with Twitter reflects the superficiality of the approach, which it seems primarily offers the opportunity to keep up with real-time internet rumors about Taylor Swift. While the seemingly frivolous starting point of this collaboration may engender more interesting possibilities in the future, Microsoft is not yet taking seriously the possibilities of connecting social networking with its search engine. I don't envision Google seeing this partnership as much of a threat, given that their own product along similar lines, the Google Wave, is currently under development. Wave has a much more serious ambition of creating a powerful internet forum that Google envisions as a replacement for email, a much more ambitious goal that shows that Google is far more serious about innovating in the area of online communication that this new offering from Bing suggests Microsoft is.