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Bing announces new social search

May 10, 2012 10:05 am by Kip Kniskern | 6 comments

Bing has scheduled a live webcast for 10 am PDT today, just a few minutes from now, to introduce “The New Bing”, which includes a new sidebar to interact with your friends to be able to search more socially.

A video appearing on www.bing.com/explore/new gives us a quick overview of the way this new sidebar will work:

The new experience will consist of three parts, as outlined below:

The new Bing is transforming search through integration with industry leading companies such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora to bring in the best information from across the web and social networks, and present it in a way that makes sense. The new Bing will be comprised of three distinct columns:
· Core Web Results: Relevant, Comprehensive, Trustworthy
Bing will continue to deliver relevant, comprehensive and trustworthy results. Core web results on Bing make it easy to focus on the links you need to get things done, without the clutter of social updates.
· Snapshot: Get It Done Faster
Bing is helping you take action and complete tasks faster with the new snapshot pane. Located between the web results on the left and the new sidebar on the right, snapshot brings relevant information and services to your search, including maps, restaurant reservations and reviews. Through partnerships with industry leading companies such as Yelp, Open Table and Fansnap, Bing is helping you do more and get things done faster.
· Sidebar: Social Search Done Right
Bing believes that connecting you with people who can help you with your task is a natural step in the evolution of search – one that simplifies actions you take today like asking friends for recommendations – while unlocking useful knowledge from your social networks. With sidebar, Bing is bringing together the best of the web and letting you share, discover and interact with friends like you do in real life.
o Ask Friends: As you search, you can post questions to get help from your Facebook friends. You can also “tag” friends Bing suggests might know more about the topic.
o Friends Who Might Know: Bing suggests friends on Facebook who might know about the topic so you can go quickly from searching to doing. Suggestions are based on what they “like”, their Facebook profile information, or photos they have shared, allowing you to easily ask them about relevant experiences and opinions.
o People Who Know: The new Bing also identifies top experts and enthusiasts from leading networks like Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn Google Plus and Blogger, so you can do more.
o Activity Feed: In the sidebar activity feed, you can see real-time posts and queries, answer friends’ questions and “like” interesting posts. Since these activities show up in both Bing (activity feed) and Facebook, you can comment on them from either place.
o Always present, never intrusive: The sidebar, located on the right, will appear as part of ever query, allowing searchers to decide when/how to interact with it.
In the coming days we will beginning rolling out the new experience in the United States. To be among the first to preview the new feature, visit http://www.bing.com/new.

Here’s the embedded webcast, which has just started:

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http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98
US only?! Again?? I’ll have to start using US Bing, I think… :(
http://twitter.com/bart_willeman Bart Willeman
Hello Microsoft? Yes, there are other countries than the US as well. No really!!!! Perhaps have a look to see if you could serve us? Start with lets say Europe? Seems to be a fairly developed part of the world. Just saying….
JohnCz
I like how “snapshot” & “sidebar” address take advantage of the additional white space. I also like where they are moving some of the filtering options that was previously found in the left pane of the search results. Overall good stuff…look forward to using it.
http://www.OfInteresttoMe.com/ Matt
Yay! US Only! Wait, that’s f***ing stupid, not yay. When will this be available in Canada?
- Damaster – LiveSide.net
  Try http://www.bing.com/?mkt=en-us ? Actually, it’s not even available in US yet…
  - http://www.OfInteresttoMe.com/ Matt
    The US doesn’t have the new social bar and snapshots, but it does have the new cleaner look, the Facebook Integration that launched in 2010, and access to Twitter. None of this is available on Bing outside the US.
    Yes, I could just set my location to the US, but why should I? If MS wants Bing to be a serious competitor to Google the need to step up their game and provide a consistent experience in all markets.