Bing & Facebook Declare War on Google with Social Search

Bing announced today it is changing the search game. As discussed in my best selling book Socialnomics (2009) the ultimate winner between Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple may hing on which company figures out social search.

Social Search: The New Frontier

Microsoft and Bing are going all in on social search and why not? Google has already defeated them on the traditional search front. As an investor in Facebook, Microsoft can do what Google cannot, integrate deeply with Facebook. I’ve been harsh on Facebook in their inability or even lack of desire to improve their search functionality. Facebook could own this new market of social search, but perhaps, behind closed doors they have been working with Microsoft to partner on developing the social search market. Social Search will eventually replace search as we know it. Will it also cause the replacement of Google?

The New Bing

“The New Bing”, includes a sidebar to better understand what your friends like and don’t like. View the video below or on www.bing.com/explore/new to see how this works.

Social Search

If you’d like to be a beta user of “The New Bing” then you need to go to http://www.bing.com/new and submit your e-mail and they will send you an invitation when it is ready in the coming days.

The new experience will consist of three parts:

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.

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Bing hopes to change the search game with it's New Bing which will focus on Social Search.

· 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.

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Social Search: Bing's new social search (New Bing) is its most innovative endeavor since it's launch 3 years ago

 

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