In a stunning move of corporate cooperation, Bing has teamed up with Facebook to deeply integrate the social giant into not just into its search results, but into its search algorithms, fundamentally changing the way it will create results.
Accordingto Microsoft: “The best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and emotions of your friends. Search is now more than a fact finder — [In this update] we’re marrying fact-based search results with your friends’ street smarts to combine the best data on the Web with the opinions of the people you trust the most and the collective IQ of the Web.”
What follows is the feature list of what Bing and Facebook have created:
Trusted Friends:People say seeing their friends’ “likes” within search results could help them make better decisions.
Collective IQ:It’s not just your friends that can help you out. There’s also value in the larger brain trust of the Web. Bing is tapping into the Collective IQ of people for online decision making aiding scenarios like when your friends don’t have the right expertise, or you may not even know exactly what you’re looking for. Because people trust people – and if your friends can’t help you decide, the rest of the Web can.
Conversational Search:Many decisions require a discussion with your friends. By combining Facebook’s communication tools with Bing, search can become conversational – taking decision-making on Bing from a passive experience to an active dialogue.
Of course, this is a new chapter for Bing. By tapping into Facebook’s social graph, the number two global search engine is betting that users will want to navigate the web with a little help from their friends.
Will it help Bing pick up market share in a Google world? Possibly. Instead of trying to beat Google at its own game, Microsoft is flexing its relationship with Facebook (of which it owns a part) to take a different path.
If Microsoft can convince the Facebooking hordes that searching with their friends is the way to go, then it might have a shot to boost its growth. It is now up to Google to make a move, will it stick with its own social strategy, or will it head over as well and talk to Mark Zuckerberg?
You can find 113 images of the partnership in actionhere. You can watch video of the new featureshere. You can nab the fact sheethere. You can find the whole press kithere.
Story byAlex Wilhelm
Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at alex@thenextweb(show all)Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex onTwitter,and onFacebook.You can reach Alex via email atalex@thenextweb.com
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