Redmond, Washington — Software monopolist Microsoft’s Bing has just expanded its social search capabilities, displaying real-time Twitter messages on Bing’s News pages, empowering its readers the ability to quickly scan the latest buzz about the biggest events, and simplifying the sharing of Bing entertainment content over Facebook.
Initially, Bing has started adding tweets into Bing News. “For some time we rolled out Bing social which lets you immerse into the real-time tweet stream to uncover the latest updates on the Web,” says Bing. “This week we took it a step further by integrating some of this real time social media data into Bing news.”
Bing News Twitter feed, circled (Credit: Screenshot by CNET)
The new capabilities is devised on existing links Bing has to both Twitter and Facebook, highlighting the increased importance of combining search engines with social networking sites. Now, when people scour Bing News for a story, tweets now appear in a scrolling column on the right side of the page under the heading “Public updates.”
So news links today about Elizabeth Taylor’s funeral were associated with brief tributes from fans as well as promotions from publications linking to articles about the actress. For some queries, input from people’s social circle is very valuable and relevant.
The concept behind the new Twitter feed is to empower readers with yet another real-time source of information. “As we have witnessed the recent tragedy in Japan or political turmoil in the Middle East, real people are relaying timely and compelling information not captured by traditional outlets,” Betsy Aoki, a Bing senior program manager, writes on the Bing blog.
“Bing news now permit users to compare and evaluate authoritative news analysis alongside real-time citizen journalists so you can decide which content sources you want to use.” “Search for a news item and promptly see what people are tweeting on the topic,” explained Betsy, in a blog post.
The Twitter feed adds a bit of disarray to a page that also includes related video to the news topic as well as links to people in the news related to the search. But, as far as the new Facebook integration, they have rolled out a new Facebook share option on results for movies, TV shows, actors, bands, and artists. Besides, it also differentiates Bing News from its much larger rival, Google News.
Furthermore, the Redmond Vole has also expanded its “Liked Results” feature, highlighting links that Facebook friends have “liked” directly in Bing’s search results. Users have to be signed into both Facebook and Bing for the feature to work.
Recently, Bing has been discovering more ways to integrate with Facebook — one area where Google continues to do very little. There is a lot of potential for Facebook data to make search results more relevant, but moves like this also help to promote Bing itself.