The millions of people around the world who search everyday are central to how we design and constantly improve Bing. To that end, we’re always looking for opportunities to have deeper relationship with Bing Rewards members. As part of that, last year we kicked off an Ultimate Bing Experience sweepstakes to give a few of our millions of Bing Rewards members a chance to come to Bing headquarters to meet the team in person.
Bing Rewards launched just over three years ago to help users to discover all the ways Bing can provide insight and help get things done. It’s also a way we reward loyal Bing users with perks as a way of saying thanks for choosing Bing, searching with us consistently and being brand ambassadors.
Here’s a recap and some photos from this year’s Ultimate Bing Experience.
In last Monday’s early morning fog, we welcomed the winners of our second Ultimate Bing Experience sweepstakes to our offices in Bellevue, WA. Juan and his son Martin joined us from Phoenix, AZ, Mitchell and Will joined us from Rochester, NY, and Haider and Mohammed flew across country from Manassas, VA. It was great to meet a handful of our members in person, hear what they love about Bing and get their input on what they’d like to see in the future.
The day kicked off with a Bing editorial team meeting where our visitors helped select photos for the homepage in December. Kristin Dean, managing editor at Bing, walked through what we look for in the photos we display on our homepage, before asking our winners to choose photos and videos for us to run in in the holiday season. Other members of the team who joined us included Stephanie Horstmanshof, senior managing editor at Bing, and Kathleen Green of the media acquisitions group.
Next up was a visit to the newly reimagined Microsoft Envisioning Centerthat launched in March. Here we got to see what researchers at Microsoft see the office, retail spaces and the home might look like in five to ten years.
After lunch in the Microsoft Commons, we swung by the Xbox Studios user research facility to learn about what goes into making and improving games for Xbox, as well as to have a bit of fun. With Xbox’s Aaron Fullmer as our guide, we got to look up close at the soon to be released Xbox One console and talk about what the new Kinect is capable of sensing.
Having had such a great day, we plan on doing it once again next year. Let us know what else you’d like us to showcase for the Ultimate Bing Experience in 2014. Leave a comment or send us a Tweet @BingRewards on Twitterto tell us.
Not a Bing Rewards member yet? It’s easy to join today by visiting http://www.bingrewards.comand following the instructions to create a Bing Rewards account.
– Alex Danskin, Marketing Communication Manager, Bing