Redmond, Washington — Relentlessly striving to expand its social presence, recently software maker Microsoft’s Bing Social Sidebar, after having been updated with fresh features for the desktop and the company just announced another update that now also brings its new design to its search results pages on the iPad. This mobile version is compatible with the Safari browser, and supports all the iPads including the tablet’s new mini cousin.
As is typical for these kinds of large rollouts from Microsoft, but soon iPad users who search with Bing will get to see the same friends’ activity on the right side of the search engine as desktop users.
The renewed social sidebar — retaining the same streamlined design, is one of the most prominent features of Microsoft’s search engine, and the iPad version performs identically the same actions. Its main purpose is to grant users the ease of finding people who are related to whatever queries they enter into the search bar. These results are displayed adjacent to the chief search results, and are based on what other people have shared, blogged or tweeted.
On the other hand, Bing’s sidebar displays users posts from social networks and links to professionals on sites like Quora that are related to the search query. With the new redesign, the sidebar now puts a stronger emphasis on showing images and the text of these social status updates. The new design also makes the social sidebar more of an integral part of the whole Bing experience instead of setting it aside in a gray box on the right of the screen.
Besides, the sidebar shows you what friends, experts, and enthusiasts have shared, blogged, or tweeted about across various social media hub. As for the question of where the Bing Social Sidebar culls information from; it does so by going through what users friends’ Facebook statuses, tweets, Fourquare activity, Klout, and more.
For instance, searching for a specific restaurant will pull up activity from friends who shared content about that restaurant. The content could be a link to an article, a status about the restaurant’s quality, or a Fourquare checking, for example.
Users who wish to reap benefits from the service need to sign in to their Facebook profile by clicking “Sign In” on Bing and authorizing the connection. If you are unable to see the social results sidebar right away, be patient; Microsoft says the update is rolling out over the course of a few days.
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