We continue to hear that one the favorite features of Bing is the rich and interactive daily image that appears on the Bing homepage. In fact, one of the questions we get asked the most is whether people can submit their own pictures. And now we can say yes! We’ve launched our first ever photo submission contest on Facebook. The theme is “summer travel,” and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3rd. To find out more about the contest including photo guidelines, rules and the schedule, visit the Bing photo contest on Facebook.
Ever wanted to know more about the pictures?
The images are chosen from a variety of licensed photos with the goal of inspiring a sense of exploration and delight while piquing your interest to learn more. Once the images are selected we create hotspots like the one you see here:
Hotspots are like virtual Easter eggs. If you hover your mouse over the image, you’ll find four of them every day. Each gives you a chance to find out more about the subject of the image for that day. Our goal in creating hotspots is to guide you toward interesting details about the image such as who, what, when, where and why. Sometimes you’ll even see a hotspot leading you to what we consider to be something wacky about or related to the image.
Want just the facts?
If you just want to know where the picture was taken, you can mouse over the copyright symbol in the bottom right corner to see a quick caption about the image, as well as the photographer’s name and agency.
Did you miss one?
If you missed the previous day’s image (or just want to see it again) click the arrows to scroll through the past 7 days of homepage images. You can interact with each page just as you could when it originally appeared. (You need to have Silverlight installed.)
What about the rest of the world?
With Bing, our international markets also get a rich image version of the homepage. And starting next month, a number of those markets (including Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK) will begin customizing the images to suit their unique audience, as well as adding their own hotspots.
We are looking forward to seeing all the great submissions! As always, keep the feedback coming and don’t forget to rate and share your favorite Bing homepage images with your friends on Facebook with our photo sharing app. Follow this link to try it out.
Stephanie Horstmanshof, Bing editorial lead
