To keep up with competitive search sites' newfound preoccupation with real-time data, Microsoft is launching a service that features its browser, Internet Explorer 8, optimized with search and "webslices" from OneRiot, a real-time social search engine. It will also offer a separate real-time add-ons package that also features OneRiot products.

"This new bundled browser that Microsoft is pushing is […] a vote of confidence in the way we index the web, the results we return, and our ability to scale- all good indicators," stated Tobias Peggs of OneRiot in an email to ReadWriteWeb.

Existing Internet Explorer 8 users can chose from three real-time add-ons packages, which feature real-time search results served by OneRiot, top shared items of the day, and top videos.

OneRiot's search algorithm determines the merits of a page based on the number of "retweets" or social media shares it receives, as well as the overall authority of the sharer.

Users will notice the OneRiot search bar in the top right of the browser; the add-ons also give users the option of selecting OneRiot as the default search engine. OneRiot search results are indexed based on an algorithm that weighs the number of social media shares each link receives as well as the authority of the sharer, among other factors. In this way it is similar to real-time search engine Topsy, which launched this week and determines the organic merit of stream-of-consciousness "tweets" based on the retweets it generates.

Yesterday, search rival Google demo'ed a new offering called Wave, which also focuses on aggregating real-time data from Twitter and other social media/instant messaging sites, as well as photos and email.