Oh dear, just a single week away and Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and every gossip site on the Web is aflame in expectation of the second installment of the young-vampires-in-lust movie series, “Twilight: New Moon.”

As pictures of its are-they-or-aren’t-they-holding-hands (um, they are) stars, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, rocketed around the Web last week, prepare for an online and offline outpouring of teenage swooning over the whole overwrought love story, which is set to debut just after midnight on Nov. 20.

Until then, here is a very typical tweet of many-too-many, with a whole lot of exclamations, natch: “6 MORE days until NEW MOON!!!! heading there early to watch twilight in theaters one last time, then its off to NEW MOON!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!”

Thankfully, this digital short video from “Saturday Night Live”–a spoof called “Firelight” with, yes, BoomTown favorite Taylor Swift, pretty much sums up the situation perfectly:

Microsoft digital head Qi Lu took to the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit conference this morning, where he confirmed a “strategic” deal with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate real-time information into Microsoft’s Bing search service.

BoomTown broke news of those twin deals earlier today.

Bing’s Twitter integration in beta form is now live here (see an image of it below; click on it to make it larger).

Facebook’s integration will come later, said Microsoft (MSFT).

Before announcing the deal, Lu–who is a quintessential techie–first went a bit deep into the weeds to talk about “how we think about search.”

Said Lu: “To start with, we think about search holistically…it’s about user intent. What it amounts to is that you are trying to build a mind reader.”

Top MSN exec Yusuf Mehdi then bounded onstage to talk about the deals with Twitter and Facebook and do a demo, which was what the audience gathered in San Francisco wanted to hear about and see.

“If today’s search is about getting to the UPS or the FedEx site, tomorrow is much more complicated,” said Mehdi, who described the deals as “strategic.”

Google (GOOG) is also in talks with both Twitter and Facebook about a similar arrangement, but Microsoft’s move was a clear one-upsmanship with its search rival.

And what Mehdi showed was impressive, with the ability to sort tweets in a number of ways.

Such information in search will obviously improve results.

Lu gave few specific monetary or operational details of the service–such as if Facebook and Twitter get a cut of its search advertising revenue or if Microsoft will archive the status updates–mostly focusing on Twitter, since it is first to roll out.

“This is just the beginning,” said Lu. “The Twitter corpus…is still evolving and emerging.”

Added Lu at the end: “Give us a try!”

Here is Microsoft’s press announcement on the deals with two of Silicon Valley’s innovation hotshots:

This morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division is announcing a new beta feature that enables people to easily search Twitter’s real-time information feed directly in Bing. This new feature helps people make better decisions and more fully understand Twitter conversations by collecting, analyzing and uniquely presenting real-time Twitter content.

More specifically, the new Twitter developments in Bing include:

A real-time index of the Tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what’s going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam, and adult content.

Giving you the option to rank tweets either by most recent or by “best match,” where we consider a Tweeter’s popularity, interestingness of the tweet, and other indicators of quality and trustworthiness.

Providing the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. Additionally, Bing automatically expands those small URLs (like bit.ly) to enable you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, we select 2 top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.

You can try out the new Bing Twitter search beta here momentarily or learn more about it at the Bing blog. Please note that this is a U.S. only feature at this time.

Facebook Partnership

As part of his on-stage discussion at the summit, Dr. Lu is also announcing a global partnership with Facebook that will bring public Facebook status updates to Bing search results. The experience will be available at a later date.

According to sources, Microsoft is close to striking a nonexclusive data-mining deal with Twitter to integrate the microblogging service’s full feed into the results of its Bing search service.

News of the deal, which was still being worked on by engineers and execs at both the software giant and the start-up as late as yesterday, could even come as early as today at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco.

Qi Lu, the head of Microsoft’s online services division, is being interviewed at the event at 11:30 am PDT.

Note: Lu is scheduled to appear onstage after Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is now too sick to attend, the company said. She also missed Yahoo’s third-quarter conference call due to an unspecified illness.

Thus, Lu is the main event of Web 2.0 tomorrow morning and it would be a good place to make a big announcement, if the talks are successful.

But sources close to the situation caution that the deal could still run into a snag and was not yet complete, although it seems more likely than not that a deal will soon be struck with Microsoft (MSFT) first and then Google (GOOG), which is the other company Twitter has been negotiating with.

BoomTown had previously reported that Twitter was in advanced talks with both the search rivals about just such a real-time search arrangement.

There could be other possibilities on the table, said sources, such as one of the big companies advertising on Twitter or any number of other Twitter partnerships with either one.

When asked about the talks onstage at Web 2.0 yesterday, Twitter CEO Evan Williams turned coy, according to numerous reports, joking “Whose deals?”

But, in fact, Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, is very much engaged in dealmaking in this regard.

Here is what I wrote previously, as to what and why:

Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

These include a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results.

The deals, stressed sources close to the situation, are nonexclusive, especially because Twitter’s management is keen to remain independent and also nonpartisan in the growing search battle between Google and Microsoft.

This means Yahoo–which recently struck a search-technology and online-advertising partnership with Microsoft–could also license Twitter’s feed to make its search results even more robust, although Boomtown could not determine if the company is in talks with the San Francisco start-up.

Sources said it is also possible that no agreement would be reached with either company.

And execs at Twitter, Microsoft and Google had no comment when asked about talks.

But doing these kinds of data deals with big search players does make a lot of sense, since it would be hard for Twitter to turbocharge its own search engine without running into the big cash-laden guns at both Google and Microsoft, which recently launched its new Bing search service.

Twitter is, instead, seeking to create a large open platform, which many could plug into, from search engines to marketers to publishers to developers.

Twitter has also been considering offering premium services to these groups and is contemplating some form of advertising offering.

But, most of all, Silicon Valley’s hot start-up is focusing now on spurring growth and engagement, along with fine-tuning its product offering.

Being deeply integrated into big search services would give Twitter a huge footprint.

Microsoft had already done a small experiment this past summer integrating Twitter data into search results, starting with tweets of bloggers like me.

How much indexing of its data Twitter will allow is unclear, but the company has certainly bought itself time to think carefully about all its options, given that it now has a lot of money in the bank.

Late last month, Twitter raised another $100 million in new funding, after already having raised $55 million.

This has given it a $1 billion valuation, despite negligible revenue.

The valuation also effectively stated that the innovative company was pretty much putting itself out of play to be acquired and is very interested in forging its own destiny.

Both Google and Microsoft execs have contemplated the idea of buying Twitter in the past, although no serious talks ever moved forward.

If they both strike data deals with Twitter, they will get the next best thing–an ability to offer all the information disseminated on Twitter in search results.

Is there gold in them thar tweets?

Maybe so, because–according to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.

Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

These include a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter, along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results.

The deals, stressed sources close to the situation, are nonexclusive, especially because Twitter’s management is keen to remain independent and also nonpartisan in the growing search battle between Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).

This means Yahoo (YHOO)–which recently struck a search-technology and online-advertising partnership with Microsoft–could also license Twitter’s feed to make its search results even more robust, although Boomtown could not determine if the company is in talks with the San Francisco start-up.

Sources said it is also possible that no agreement would be reached with either company.

And execs at Twitter, Microsoft and Google had no comment when asked about talks.

But doing these kinds of data deals with big search players does make a lot of sense, since it would be hard for Twitter to turbocharge its own search engine without running into the big cash-laden guns at both Google and Microsoft, which recently launched its new Bing search service.

Twitter is, instead, seeking to create a large open platform, which many could plug into, from search engines to marketers to publishers to developers.

Twitter has also been considering offering premium services to these groups and is contemplating some form of advertising offering.

But, most of all, Silicon Valley’s hot start-up is focusing now on spurring growth and engagement, along with fine-tuning its product offering.

Being deeply integrated into big search services would give Twitter a huge footprint.

Microsoft had already done a small experiment this past summer integrating Twitter data into search results, starting with tweets of bloggers like me.

How much indexing of its data Twitter will allow is unclear, but the company has certainly bought itself time to think carefully about all its options, given that it now has a lot of money in the bank.

Late last month, Twitter raised another $100 million in new funding, after already having raised $55 million.

This has given it a $1 billion valuation, despite negligible revenue.

The valuation also effectively stated that the innovative company was pretty much putting itself out of play to be acquired and is very interested in forging its own destiny.

Both Google and Microsoft execs have contemplated the idea of buying Twitter in the past, although no serious talks ever moved forward.

If they both strike data deals with Twitter, they will get the next best thing–an ability to offer all the information disseminated on Twitter in search results.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Since it debuted last week, a spoof video for Twitteleh is rising fast, with close to 200,000 views on YouTube.

It’s one of the many parodies of the popular microblogging service, Twitter, which attracts them the way it attracts valuation-mad VCs.

This one urges good sons to tweet answers to classic Jewish mother questions such as: “What have you eaten?” and “Are you wearing a sweater?”

Here it is:

And, here are BoomTown’s two favorite Twitter-mocking videos so far, one from Slate for Flutter and one from “The Daily Show,” with the incomparable Samantha Bee:

Courtney Love went into a Twitter frenzy yesterday, threatening to sue Activision Blizzard (ATVI) over of its use of the image of her late husband and grunge music legend Kurt Cobain in the latest version of its popular music game, Guitar Hero.

Some tweet gems:

“not in twenty JILLION years would i EVER have allowed this and this is lethal.”

“we get NO money for this, travesty, Frances gets NO money for the rape.”

Except, oops, Love signed the contract herself and also, sources said, the check has long been cashed from Activision.

Smells like mean spirit!

“Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero® 5,” said Activision in a statement.

Cobain, who killed himself in 1994, is an “unlockable” character in the Guitar Hero 5 game recently released. When a character is unlockable, the avatar can play other songs too.

So, presumably Cobain could play Bon Jovi, which apparently pisses Love off.

In fact, Love’s lawyer told the TMZ.com Web site: “Activision is exploiting Kurt’s image in a manner anathema to the very essence of his music, spirit and essence. I along with Ms. Cobain hope those who love Kurt’s music strongly voice their sentiments to Activision and demand his image not be debased by singing the songs of Bon Jovi.”

But one still has to wonder why Love–who is now better known for her wacky antics than her own music (you can see a list of some of her frequent outbursts here from Entertainment Weekly)–chose to go nuts now rather than before the game was released.

Well, BoomTown has a very good guess, but I will keep it to myself!

So until the more dulcet meds kick in for Love, here’s a video from a recent tour I did at Guitar Hero HQ in Silicon Valley, on the release of GH5:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090911/smells-like-mean-spirit-courtney-love-collects-check-from-guitar-hero-but-goes-on-twitter-rampage-anyway/feed/ 1 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090904/if-some-dads-rants-on-twitter-can-go-viral-my-mom-needs-to-turbo-tweet/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090904/if-some-dads-rants-on-twitter-can-go-viral-my-mom-needs-to-turbo-tweet/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:43:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=18112

Oh, dear; now my mom is going to be really pissed at me for not making her a Twitter sensation.

Unlike, according to a very amusing article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, Justin Halpern–who has been tweeting wacky quips uttered by his dad without him knowing much about it, under the handle: @s—mydadsays.

And, lo and behold, with only 28 tweets, the cranky 73-year-old has attracted almost 250,000 followers, after a spate of media attention and retweeting.

Some tweets included:

“Don’t touch the bacon, it’s not done yet. You let me handle the bacon, and i’ll let you handle…what ever it is you do. I guess nothing.”

“You know, sometimes it’s nice having you around. But now ain’t one of those times. Now gimmie the remote we’re not watching this bullshit.”

“What are you listening to?…I know who Hall & Oates are god dammit. It’s the mustache guy and the gay man.”

The tweets have caused such a hubbub that Halpern has been approached by book agents, publishers and producers.

Rut-roh, since my brother and I did the same thing at Walt Mossberg’s and my D: All Things Digital conference, typing up my mother’s observations of some of Silicon Valley’s poobahs and more in 140 characters.

We did so after she expressed her distaste of Twitter in a video I showed before interviewing its founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, onstage (see below).

Here is the account name: @luckyd7.

Some of her 40 tweets (which, I hate to admit, I have not updated since mid-June):

“I’m going to bed. Why would anybody care about that!”

“Kara says ashton kutcher twitters. So what! His claim to fame is he married someone eighteen years older.”

“Just met the twitter guys. They are so cute. I’m embarrassed.”

“Oh my god! Kara put my wedding portrait as my twitter picture. Then again, I did look fabulous.”

“Steve Ballmer just announced the name of his new search program. Bing! I don’t like it. It’s stupid. Reminds me of the Sopranos.”

Obviously, to catch Mr. Halpern, I am going to have to up my game and start stalking my mother for spicier fare–because from the mouths of parents, ofttimes come gems.

Until then, here she is in that Twitter-bashing video:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090904/if-some-dads-rants-on-twitter-can-go-viral-my-mom-needs-to-turbo-tweet/feed/ 1 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/from-the-department-of-i-can-hardly-wait-a-sneak-peek-of-the-new-microsoft-store/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/from-the-department-of-i-can-hardly-wait-a-sneak-peek-of-the-new-microsoft-store/#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:50:56 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17166 Today, Microsoft (MSFT) tweeted a photo of the wall in front of one of its upcoming retail stores, either in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Mission Viejo, Calif.

You can see it below, as well as the Twitter post, although it is not clear which location it is.

Frankly, those mall potted plants could be just about anywhere–I am guessing some Foot Locker is right around the corner and an Outback Steakhouse is not far either.

This does not bode well if the software giant is hoping to one-up the sleek and hip Apple (AAPL) store vibe.

In fact, that’s where BoomTown is off to now, to nab an early place in line for an iTablet.

(Click on the images to make them larger.)

(By the way, Microsoft made one failed foray into retail many years ago in San Francisco, which you can read about here.)

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/from-the-department-of-i-can-hardly-wait-a-sneak-peek-of-the-new-microsoft-store/feed/ 7 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/boomtown-decodes-twitters-denial-of-service-blog-post-so-you-dont-have-to/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/boomtown-decodes-twitters-denial-of-service-blog-post-so-you-dont-have-to/#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:17:56 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17142

This morning, in a blog post titled “The Adventure Continues,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone gave more of an explanation for the outage that the microblogging service endured due to a denial-of-service attack yesterday.

Fortunately, BoomTown can read between the lines in order to decipher the secret message herein!

Biz wrote: The Adventure Continues.

Translation: By “adventure,” I mean yet-another-friggin’-Twitter-birdie-crisis.

Considering all the fail whales, the stolen documents and now this, I would have to say we have now taken Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL’s title as Internet company most likely to experience technical difficulties. Do not adjust your screens! Please stand by!

Biz wrote: In the past 24 hours, we’ve been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We’re working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures–there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack.

Translation: We’d like to blame this one on TechCrunch somehow, and are hard at work on another impolitic internal memo about how to do so that also manages to insult potential acquirers, such as Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and our investors.

The reason we doused this crisis with extra amounts of weed killer is because no one will be able to accuse us of sitting by in our usual chill manner, which is exemplified by the official Twitter company motto: “Scoble dude, relax, it’s only 140 characters.”

Biz wrote: The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.

Translation: And if blaming TechCrunch does not work, there is always Iran to point the finger at!

However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion of these motivations–mostly because it will just piss off the hackers more and they will crush our little technical operation like it is papier maché.

Which, let’s be honest, it is. Anybody got any spare Elmer’s Glue?

Biz wrote: As a reminder, no data or personal information of any kind has been compromised. Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon. Nevertheless, we can and will improve system response to these assaults such that they don’t interfere with our normal, everyday Twittering.

Translation: No data or personal information of any kind have been compromised, except–of course–for Ashton Kuchter’s.

But, to be fair, that dude overshares like Perez and Paris Hilton combined and on steroids.

Not that we mind him tweeting pictures of his wife’s posterior, but he makes John Mayer seem shy.

Denial-of-service attacks are a known quantity on the Web, much the way our fail whale is.

Nevertheless, we can and will fail again, so there will be yet another spate of articles and blog posts about the indignity of life without Twittering to show just how indispensable we are.

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090807/boomtown-decodes-twitters-denial-of-service-blog-post-so-you-dont-have-to/feed/ 0 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090806/even-better-the-jk-divorce-dance/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090806/even-better-the-jk-divorce-dance/#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:26:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17090

Earlier today, BoomTown posted on the difficulty of making scratch off of popular online videos, including the recent hit of the Jill and Kevin wedding dance video.

Here’s an inevitable spoof–by New York-based Indigo Productions–the divorce dance.

At least someone’s going to pay up!

Here’s the spoof video, (which I learned about from a fellow Twitter-er after my first post):

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090806/even-better-the-jk-divorce-dance/feed/ 0 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090805/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-paula-simon-plus-when-abdul-did-d6/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090805/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-paula-simon-plus-when-abdul-did-d6/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:44:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17043

BoomTown is wearing all-black today, in profound mourning for the prospect of no Paula Abdul judging on “American Idol” next season.

“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return,” tweeted Abdul yesterday, bidding goodbye, natch, on Twitter.

Of course, her departure was over money–the boy talent, co-judge Simon Cowell and MC Ryan Seacrest, got a ton of it and Abdul got much less (although $2 million a year is a lot, it paled in comparison).

She is worth the scratch, though–especially considering how much the television singing juggernaut makes on Coke advertising placement alone–whether she was falling asleep in Carrie Underwood’s first audition or sleeping with contestants (allegedly!) or just doing that goofy seal clap and blathering out incomprehensible compliments to contestants.

Memo to News Corp. (NWS) TV unit Fox, which produces the TV show in the U.S.: Hand over more dough and pronto!

Sigh, as it is probably not to be–even though her bio is still on the “Idol” Web site.

So, here is a very funny video mashup done about her odd relationship with the acerbic Cowell.

Plus, here is a video from when Adbul also actually appeared–stranger than fiction–at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference.

She was there to help Activision Blizzard (ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick publicly demo “Guitar Hero IV” for the first time, with the help of skateboarding star Tony Hawk.

I’ll be honest–I was sure she’d do something crazy, like goose Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT) or maybe fall off the stage–but she turned out to be a pro and forever my girl (oh, I had to).

Check it out, since I am off draping crepe at the All Things Digital HQ:

Paula & Simon:

Paula at D6:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090805/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-paula-simon-plus-when-abdul-did-d6/feed/ 0 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090723/exclusive-twitter-to-debut-a-new-main-home-page-next-week/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090723/exclusive-twitter-to-debut-a-new-main-home-page-next-week/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:26:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16430 Twitter will unveil a new main homepage next week at Twitter.com, said co-founder Biz Stone, in order “to better show who we are.”

In an interview with BoomTown this afternoon, Stone said the current page is essentially confusing to the masses of people who come to it, made aware of the microblogging service by the massive media hype it has received over the last year.

People arriving at the new main homepage will be greeted by a search box, information on Twitter trends and a panoply of more specific information about how they can use Twitter.

“You can try it out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it,” said Stone. “We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to.”

Stone is right.

As you can see below (click on the image to make it larger), the current main homepage is pretty lame now, with a picture of a bird on a branch, some cursory explanatory what-why-how information, a link to a video and some media kudos, as well as an ability to sign on.

Stone said the goal is to make the page as lively as Twitter is.

“We have to turn a lot of awareness into engagement,” said Stone. “Our front page is not reflective of that right now.”

Thus, the San Francisco-based company has redone its homepage to be more interactive.

Said Stone: “We want it to show us as a place where people can discover what is going on in real-time and much more.”

It’s an interesting move for Twitter since the service could use a more robust homepage to give it more of a unified feeling.

Currently, users interact only with their own pages and do not use any central Twitter hub.

Eventually, although Stone did not say this was a goal, Twitter could use a more programmed homepage to feature popular subjects, tweets and more.

Part of the effort to make Twitter understandable is a new site called “Twitter 101,” which Stone said was to give companies a way to understand how to use Twitter.

(You can see the site here.)

In a blog post on Twitter 101 today, Stone wrote:

“We coordinated with business students and writers to surface some interesting findings, best practices, steps for getting started, and case studies. The results demonstrate how customers are getting value out of Twitter and suggest techniques businesses can employ to enhance that value. While this work was envisioned for businesses, it’s also useful for anyone using Twitter so have a look if you like.”

As an added bonus, here is a full video of Stone and Twitter CEO Evan Williams talking about the innovative start-up in an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg and me at the D: All Things Digital conference in late May:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090723/exclusive-twitter-to-debut-a-new-main-home-page-next-week/feed/ 0 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090722/unlike-oprah-letterman-does-not-even-pretend-to-like-or-even-know-twitter/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090722/unlike-oprah-letterman-does-not-even-pretend-to-like-or-even-know-twitter/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:22:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16272

Here’s a priceless video segment from David Letterman’s “Late Show” last night, as he is taught how to use Twitter by actor Kevin Spacey.

After asking how much it costs and noting that he could get anyone on Manhattan’s 57th Street to say hello just as much as Spacey could get tweets from his 800,000 followers, Letterman officially declares Twitter a “waste of time.”

Perhaps so, but it also makes for great talk-show schtick.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090722/unlike-oprah-letterman-does-not-even-pretend-to-like-or-even-know-twitter/feed/ 3 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090701/microsoft-adds-some-twitter-real-time-data-to-bing-and-stalks-boomtown-in-the-process/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090701/microsoft-adds-some-twitter-real-time-data-to-bing-and-stalks-boomtown-in-the-process/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:06:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=15327

Microsoft just announced in a blog post that it was “integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.”

Microsoft (MSFT) said it is not indexing all of Twitter in its new Bing search service–not yet, that is–nor has it made any kind of exclusive deal with Twitter to add this real-time feed.

Recent tweets will be prominently displayed near the top of the search page, but could also be spread throughout the results.

The feature is now rolling out, so might not be able to be accessed immediately. It will be updated every minute, said Microsoft.

Microsoft is the first major search service to do this on a regular basis, using public programming interfaces, or API’s, available to anyone from Twitter–and it is an aggressive move, which seems to be part of its major push by Bing (which is, in fact, seeing some share gain in yet another report released today).

But, all are moving in that direction. While neither Google (GOOG) nor Yahoo (YHOO) is regularly indexing any part of the microblogging service’s real-time data stream yet, both have been testing the idea internally.

All three, though, do index static Twitter profiles in some way in their search results. They also can show older tweets that have specific keywords in them.

The Microsoft effort is different, and, um–and I had absolutely no idea that the company was doing this–appears to include BoomTown tweets, as well as those from other tech bloggers like Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and a “few thousand people to start.”

Still, in a mission-accomplished effort to creep me out, Microsoft’s Sean Suchter, general manager of its Silicon Valley Search Technology Center, noted in the blog, “starting today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results.”

He then used my name and Twitter profile as an example, displaying some of my duller tweets of stories I had posted on All Things Digital.

(My testy roundelay with TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld about the veracity of its Twitter-about-to-sell-to-Google post a while back would have been much more interesting, and pertinent too!)

In an interview with me this afternoon, Suchter described the addition of the specific tweets as a “first step” in adding a lot more real-time data to Bing.

“Given Twitter is the big gorilla here and it is a really interesting frontier for search, we thought it was important to get something out there,” he said. “It is also about us learning how users interact with it that will also be really interesting.”

Suchter said Twitter is aware of the move, but that Microsoft did not need any extra help from the San Francisco start-up to launch it.

Suchter said it would begin with a limited number of tweets for now and will not include search results of tweets about a person–although that is possible. And Microsoft, he said, was not able to index all of Twitter at the present time.

“We would like to grow this, because this area is so exciting, so we wanted to get the plumbing working to show we could do it,” said Suchter. “And since there is a lot of useful content in Twitter and in this real-time corpus, it has to be a big part of the search experience in the future.”

This is obviously a first shot in what will be a long war over real-time search among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo–each of which has also been talking to Twitter about a variety of partnership deals that have yet to be struck.

Here is Suchter’s blog on the Twitter real-time data addition:

Bringing a Bit of Twitter to Bing

There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Starting today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results. For example, if you type “Kara Swisher Twitter” or “Kara Swisher Tweets” or even “@karaswisher” as your search query, you’ll see something like this:

The answer will include that person’s latest Tweets, along with an easy link to “See more tweets” from that individual.

We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets. We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search. We’d love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search.

And while we may not be famous, we are prolific, so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for all the latest news from Bing!

Sean Suchter, General Manager, Search Technology Center, Silicon Valley

Speaking of creepy stalking, please enjoy this nail-biting trailer for “Play Misty for Me”:

]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090701/microsoft-adds-some-twitter-real-time-data-to-bing-and-stalks-boomtown-in-the-process/feed/ 3 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090518/will-the-twitter-twins-channel-the-zoolander-duo-at-d7-next-week/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090518/will-the-twitter-twins-channel-the-zoolander-duo-at-d7-next-week/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 13:15:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13658 While getting ready for the spate of interviews at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference in just seven days, BoomTown has been doing a lot of research on the people taking the stage.

Some interviews will be quite serious (Eve Ensler, talking about the dire situation in the Congo) and some possibly funny (Mark Cuban, who simply defies definition).

But this picture that Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams posted today on his Flickr page is easily the most unusual bit of research I have come across.

Here it is, aptly titled, “This doesn’t seem awkward at all”:

Taken at Time magazine’s Time 100 fete in New York recently, where the pair were among this year’s honorees, Williams and fellow Twitter founder Biz Stone were looking, well, I could not say at first just what the microblogging potentates were looking like.

That is, until I compared the photo with the one below of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, who played supermodels Hansel and Derek in the nearly perfect movie, “Zoolander.”

Is it the “Blue Steel” pose?

How lucky that All Things Digital readers can see the pair strut their stuff onstage in real-time (how Twittery of us!), starting next Tuesday night in posts and videos, in the opening night interview Walt Mossberg and I will conduct with Williams and Stone.

In their honor we’ve already tweeted–in fewer than 140 characters each–their bios thusly for our program–I hope they appreciate our editorial license with their short and sweet lives:

Williams was raised on a farm in Nebraska, dropped out of college, was co-founder of Pyra Labs, which created Blogger and sold to Google.

Stone helped found things besides Twitter: Xanga, Blogger and Odeo. He worked for Google with Blogger. He once won a debate at Oxford Union.

You can also see the rest of the D7 speaker list and click to more bios here.

[Photo of Williams and Stone courtesy of Evan Williams on Flickr.]

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