The Microsoft-owned search engine launched a new feature that empowers Facebook users to browse and perform specific searches for your Facebook photos and those of your Facebook friends after authorizing the Bing app.
The new feature is part of Bing’s ongoing evolution to make search more visual. “With more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook each day, photo viewing is one of the most popular activity people perform on Facebook,” Bing wrote in a blog post.
On the other hand, if you do not have any particular image in mind, the new Friends’ Photos feature also allows users to simply browse through Facebook friends’ collections. Bing now allows you to quickly discover that special photo (out of your friends’ thousands) on Facebook with the new Friends’ Photo feature–whether you are looking for a specific moment, or just want to see what your friends have been up to at www.bing.com/friendsphotos, says Bing.
Basically, it is image search for your entire network of Facebook friends, and when you use the Microsoft search engine to search photos, you will see the results arranged in the now-ubiquitous Pinterest-style waterfall layout, as shown above. However, the newly released Friends’ Photo feature is not available directly from the Bing homepage. Instead, you must navigate to Friends’ Photos before you can start searching your friends’ Facebook albums.
Apart from other things, the new Bing search feature also introduces something you can not even do on Facebook itself: Search for specific keywords in photo captions or album titles. For instance, if you want to search for “Italy” on Facebook, there is no way to find your friends’ photos with related captions. But on Bing search, you can easily see all the photos of your friends in Italy.
However, you need not about worry about unwanted eyes prying your privacy. The feature only works if you are signed into Facebook and have granted Bing permission to connect. If you have not done these things, you will first see a prompt to login, followed by a permissions page from Facebook.com, before you can start searching.
Hence, if you are worried about your photos from Spring Break 2007 showing up in search results of the masses, rest assured. Only your friends who already had access to the photos can see your uploads.
In fact, the company considers privacy pretty seriously, it says, “In Bing Friends’ Photos, your friends will only see photos you have shared with them, and your photos cannot be viewed by anyone other than your friends on Facebook,” the blog post states. “Microsoft is keenly committed to being clear about how we use your data, and to giving you control, enhanced security, and benefit for sharing your data.”
But, once authorized and connected, browsing each thumbnail image shows the number of likes and comments, and when you click on an image, it expands while showing comments in a sidebar. Here, you can add your own comment, like a photo or share it on your wall directly from Bing. There is also an option to open photos in Facebook, which is useful if you want to tag a photo or add a location.
“With this release, we are taking it a step further and letting you search and browse your Facebook friends’ photos right in Bing,” Social Team senior program manager Ian Lin wrote in a blog entry.