Bing Social Updates Arrive Today: For Every Search, There is Someone Who Can Help

Search is great at retrieving information from across the web to help you find what you’re looking for and get more done. But, more often than not, we look to the people we trust to help us make decisions and get stuff done. At Bing, we believe that for anything you want to get done on Bing, there is at least one person out there who can help. That’s why we introduced a new information architecture with a three column design that focuses on bringing you information from the web to help you take action and interact with friends without compromising the core search experience.

Imagine you’re planning a trip to New York. When using Bing, you not only will find great search results about the city, but you’ll also find information from your friends who live or have visited in the sidebar. Now you know which of your friends might have the inside scoop on what to do, or better yet might want to join you. We think matching your search intent with relevant people and experts is a profound change to the way we use search, and can make it more useful than ever before. We began this work last June, and now with our latest update, we’re expanding beyond “Likes,” photos and profile information to include status updates, shared links and comments – all in an effort to help you get more done.

Starting today, five times more of your friends’ content on Facebook is searchable in the sidebar – including status updates, shared links, comments and photos from your friends. With the addition of status updates, shared links and comments to the sidebar, it’s now easier to see who knows and what they’ve shared related to your search. So when your friends aren’t around, Bing is the perfect stand-in.

Check out the video below to see the sidebar in action:

Bing allows you to search not only great web results but also information from your Facebook friends, and expert opinions from Twitter, foursquare, Quora, Klout, Google+ and more, so you get the best of the social web on Bing. So now that you’ve researched New York and talked to your friends about it, you’re ready to book the trip and plan stuff to do.

Search More Facebook Content in Bing: Five times more of your friend’s Facebook is now searchable on Bing. If they have a status update, shared link, comment or photo that is relevant to your search we’ll surface it in sidebar.

Discover Great Moments: Discover something new with the Friends’ Photos experience. See your friend in Times Square or camping in the desert in immersive, full-screen detail.

Tap into the Best of the Social Web: Find experts and enthusiasts from Twitter, Quora, foursquare, and more. When you search for New York we’re going to surface people who may have valuable insights on restaurants or attractions.

Streamlined Design: We have removed the need to hover over a friend or expert to see additional content – now with one glance you can see content front and center clearly marked “social results”. We have also left-justified the results so there is less blank space on the page. If you want to see additional social results, we’ve added “+ see all” icon that lets you dive into more information.

Bing also puts you in control of your search experience. We honor all of your existing Facebook privacy settings, nothing is shared automatically, you only see what your friends give you permission to see (though their Facebook settings) so you only share what you want to share.

Using Bing’s sidebar is only three steps away. Simply go to Bing, click on Connect to Facebook on the upper right corner of the screen, sign in to your Facebook profile and you’re good to go!

It’s amazing what you can do when friends are a part of your search.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

– Derrick Connell, Corporate Vice President, Bing.