Microsoft's Bing Adds New Facebook Features

Bing is incorporating several new Facebook social cues into its Bing search results, taking advantage of its ongoing partnership with Facebook to find additional ways to compete with Google.

 

Since last year, Bing search results have highlighted online content that has been liked through Facebook when it seemed relevant to the query.

Going forward, Microsoft, an investor in the Palo Alto company, will begin highlighting the social signals more frequently and prominently. It will also add more 'liked' categories from Facebook friends, including specific online sites.

 

Microsoft says it will tap into the "collective IQ" of the Web, by indicating articles and topics that many Facebook members are 'liking,' regardless of whether those people are connected to the Bing user. And calls the feature "conversational search," allowing users to easily ask their friends about online decisions they're trying to make. For instance, if a person types a travel query, such as 'Paris,' Bing will show Facebook friends who live there. By clicking on the adjacent link, users can ask those people about things like hotels or transportation.

Likewise, within Bing's shopping results, a person can click on items they might be interested in, such as various cameras, and then click on a button that transports them to a Facebook messaging page. Once there, a Bing user can ask their photographer friends for recommendations in a note that automatically includes the items in question.

 

Microsoft says " Eighty percent of people delay making a decision, such as an online purchase, until they get some sort of positive feedback from a friend. The new social features aim to make that process faster and more efficient for the user. "You use your friends offline to make decisions, in big ways and small," said Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, in an interview. "Now you can have the same experience online."

 

Google has also integrated social signals into its search results, including from Twitter and Facebook. But because the search giant doesn't share Microsoft's close relationship with Facebook its information from the latter company is far more limited.

If you want to learn more about the new features, including some not discussed in this post, read Microsoft's blog here.

 

Our Recommendations

 

This further highlights the importance being given to Social Networking sites and the need to ensure your company has a profile page on it.

Your profile page needs to be kept up to date and active, interacting with your customers to encourage them to ‘like’ pages and content to build it's online kudos.

 

News Source: www.sfgate.com

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