Who would have ever thought that Microsoft would come out with a search-based feature faster than Google? Well, that’s exactly what Bing has done with the new addition of Twitter updates, becoming the first search engine to integrate so tightly with the micro-blogging service.

So now when you go to Bing, you can key in something like “Al Gore Twitter”, “Al Gore Tweets” or “@Al Gore” to get the latest Twitter update by the Nobel Laureate as the top result. Needless to say, this will eventually turn into a feature where searching for a famous personality or corporation will give you their latest Tweet as the first result.

However, don’t expect to key in your own Twitter handle and hope for the same result. Microsoft is just rolling out this feature (and some users might have to wait a couple of days before they can see it in action) and so has hand-picked a few thousand accounts based on popularity and frequency. The list currently includes the likes of technology columnist Kara Swisher, actor Ashton Kutcher, Nobel laureate Al Gore, American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest, etc.

More names and features will be added to the search as development progresses. We are just surprised that it took so long for a search engine to do this, and even more so that it was Bing and not Google! A sign of the times?

Meanwhile, Bing has also launched a competition to let users feature their photo on the daily-updated interactive homepage. The theme is “summer travel”, and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3. For details, visit the contest’s Facebook page.