According to Facebook, the average person between the ages of 18-24 in the US has over 400 friends. If you’re like us, it’s hard to keep up with what friends are posting on an ongoing basis, and harder still to search and find specific topics that your friends may have posted about. By bringing together Bing and Facebook, you have an easy way to complement your search with helpful, interesting or insightful content your friends have shared.

Following the introduction of social sidebar last year, we’ve been exploring ways to make it even more useful. Starting today, you will see comments on a relevant Facebook post within sidebar, as well as the ability add your own, all without having to leave Bing. You can also “Like” a post directly from Bing. Now you can see what your friends might know about what you’re searching for and engage with them directly without leaving the search page.

How does it work? Let’s say I’m searching for Beyoncé tickets because I know she is coming to town soon. I can see that my friend has recently posted that she has an extra ticket to the show. Now without leaving the Bing results page, I comment directly to her post letting her know that I’d love to join her for the concert. I’ve gone from simply browsing to attending a concert in just a few easy steps – all thanks to Bing.

Here’s another example of the sidebar commenting in action:

To experience this for yourself, simply go to www.bing.com and in the top, right corner of the page connect your Facebook account to Bing. As always, we honor your account settings and won’t share any information without your approval.

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

– Nektarios Ioannides, Program Manager, Bing