Bing gets more social about search with its makeover
Microsoft’s Bing is taking an in-your-Facebook approach to search with a big overhaul to incorporate the expertise of the people in your social networking circle.
“Today we are taking a big step forward as we begin rolling out what is the most significant update to Bing since we launched three years ago,” reads a postfrom the Bing Team. “Over the coming weeks, we will be introducing a brand new way to search designed to help you take action and interact with friends and experts without compromising the core search experience.”
Leveraging its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft will be introducing a series of changes to its search offering by mining the expertise of your connections on the social networking site. The hope is to personalize the search experience to make it more relevant as Bing aims to pull users from behemoth Google.
The ability to share just about everything in real-time through digital connections “presents an unprecedented opportunity to rethink how search should work,” the post reads. “Suddenly an index of documents that does not embrace these changes is insufficient.”
The new format will incorporate three columns: the search results on the far left, a snapshot of relevant services and information in the center and your social knowledge on the far right.
The search column provides links of “algorithmic relevance” without any intrusions.
The snapshot column appears designed to help users act and interact with select companies for making reservations, buying tickets and the like “...with industry leading companies like Open Table, FanSnap and others.”
The friend column integrates what many of us do in a separate tab on Facebook or Twitter -- friend source. It lets you post a question to get help from your Facebook network while you search. “You can ‘tag’ friends Bing suggests might know about the topic.” And your friends can reply in either Facebook or on Bing.
Bing will also suggest other “influential” connections that it finds on sites such as Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn and Google Plusand Blogger.
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