Social Search – The New Bing Feature

Is Microsoft cornering Google to acquire Search Engine market? Microsoft is close associate to Facebook as far as I aware. Microsoft launched a new search feature in Bing on May 10, 2012 [which holds second in current US market share 18.3] called Social Search which brings your friends, families, acquaintances in your Bing search result.

Last week I registered to check out the cool feature (as well as to test) in Bing, today chill morning I’ve got the invite from Microsoft with the subject line ‘Lucky you.  You’re invited to try the New Bing.’ in my iPod.

Immediately I wake up from my bed to wake up my laptop to test the New Bing. Well before dig into the feature, we will see what is required to try out the New Bing.

It is good to have Hotmail account (though it is optional) and of course a Facebook account. I will tell you the reason at the end of this blog.

To subscribe to try the New Bing; follow below steps

  1. Launch www.bing.com from your favorite browser
  2. By default, you can see the promotion about the new Bing at top of the Bing website.
  3. Click on Check it out
  4. Enter your email address to subscribe.
  5. Within a few days you will receive an email from Microsoft to try the new Bing.

Now let us dig into social search. This new feature brings people from your social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Quora, Foursquare, and other which will be coming soon) in the search result. E.g. suppose I want to shop a new iPhone 4s. But I want to know the review from my friends. Peep into Bing shopping and add the required item to your shopping list and post your comments to your Facebook wall.

If you are planning to hang out with your girlfriend, you want to check out some restaurants that offers candle lit dinner, just search ‘Los Angeles restaurants’; Bing categorizes the search result in the panes “Search Knows,” “Bing Knows” and “Friends Know” and also there is an “Activity” pane. Snapshot view will be out in few days.

Microsoft thinks of its search algorithm as “fact finder” (reference Washington Post). If any of your friends like “NDTV.com” in the search result there will be blue colored thumps up icon will appear which is similar to +1 button in Google+.

The second column is allocated for Ads. “Friends Know” reveals the results from your social network i.e. from your friends. If you are searching for Infosys Mysore, if I was in Infosys Mysore then the search results shows about me.

People Know pane reveals the results from the social network who know about the product (search term). E.g. if you search for “C++”, “People Know” pane shows the result from Twitter who tweeted about “C++”

Similarly Activity pane shows the results from your friends about their recent activity.

Sign up here http://www.bing.com/explore/new. The purpose of Hotmail account is to sign up for Bing Reward program. You get credit points for each search you perform in Bing.

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