BingTweets Goes down with a 404 Error on day of MicroHoo and Twitter homepage change

UPDATE: BingTweets just came back up around 3:30 PM EST. Wonder what happened?



Today was the day of the long awaited Microsoft-Yahoo deal materializing. It was also the day of Twitter's homepage change into a more search based page.

The headlines have already been made: Twitter goes Google, MicroHoo is a Done Deal, etc

But suddenly, BingTweets stopped working.

BingTweets was one of Microsoft's latest attempts to get an advantage over the search competition known as Google, by adding real time searching to Bing, albeit on another website: www.BingTweets.com

But what happened? This joint venture between Microsoft and Federated Media apparently no longer exists. Or at least, that's the error you'll get if you go to BingTweets.com

It was working fine only a few hours ago, so what happened?

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How Microsoft Forced Apple to Admit Their Fault

It was but a few months ago that Microsoft began their counterattack upon Apple with new advertisements. Though Apple reveled then at the thought of their provocation causing such a powerful reaction, one consisting of multiple advertisement campaigns that sought to lure viewers into using Windows and Microsoft products, they may perhaps regret it now.

Why? It's simple.

There once was a series of ads by Microsoft called I'm a PC. There were those that liked it, and those that hated it. But there definitely was one ad that stuck out to Apple.

Laptop Hunter.
This was an ad featuring somebody picking between Mac and PCs, and who decided to buy a PC for about $700, since she thought the PC offered more value for her money compared to the Mac that cost $2000.

Some people claim that this ad really did show the problem with Macs in general, and that it was very effective. Well it seems that it was quite effective after all, because Apple had a serious reaction to it.

Recently we've been hearing about how Apple lawyers sent Microsoft a cease and desist letter telling them that their ad was no longer true and that they cannot continue their false advertising.
Folks over at Microsoft jumped with joy that Apple had finally gotten enough of Microsoft's ads, thus showing they were effective, but after a while, Microsoft complied and changed up the ads.

But why did they do this? I see lots and lots of people out there commenting or posting that Microsoft was forced to change the ad, and that Apple won because Microsoft was too scared to continue and that they knew it was false advertising.
But wait, the whole reason this happened was because Apple lowered their prices.

Apple lowered their prices.

It seems that Apple has admitted that they were wrong about how people would still pay up for expensive computers Apple sells, and so lowered their prices. But another thing it tells us is that it was mostly the Microsoft ad at work, because right after they lowered prices, they go screaming to Microsoft to change the ad.

It seems more than likely that Apple got forced to lower their prices, and then ad became false because the prices got lowered, and that's why Apple sent the cease and desist letter.

Though many people want to claim that Microsoft submitted to Apple's demands, it's more like Apple was forced to do something they did not want to do in order to stop the super effective Microsoft ad.

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