Redmond, Washington — Barely two months after Bing unveiled a major facelift to their search results pages, including the nifty sidebar functionality, which promises to integrate with popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. Today, Bing has announced the first new social sidebar integration since that big launch — and not it incorporated location-based app Foursquare.
The new design, which launched in the U.S., in mid-May, features a three-column format. From now onwards, Bing users in the U.S. will be able to view public tips from Foursquare in the sidebar column on the right hand side of the screen, which gives users additional information from the social community. Basically, public tips from Foursquare will appear on a user’s location and query search.
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The sidebar on the left touts Facebook integration, displaying actions your Facebook friends have taken related to your search query — that section is called “Friends Who Might Know.”
Apart from this, the social sidebar also contains another section called “People Who Know,” with information from experts and enthusiasts related to your query search, gleaned from Twitter, Google+ and the blogger blog-publishing service.
If you search for information on a hot restaurant in town, for instance, tips and recommendations from those who have posted publicly about that restaurant on foursquare will show up.
“Now when you are planning a trip to that dream destination or a night on the town, you can find people who are knowledgeable about the place you are searching, based on what they’ve publicly shared on foursquare,” Bing Social Team senior program manager Swati Gharse wrote on the company blog.
Alternatively, you can carry-out venue search queries for places like Gary Danko in San Francisco, Chez Napoleon in New York, Whole Foods Market in Austin, Golden Gate Park, and much more.
For instance, a quick search for “Starbucks” extracts location-specific tips from Foursquare users about the best deals on refills or which cafe location has the closest free Wi-Fi. The tips will show the Foursquare icon and will also display a link to the location’s page on the network.
“The tips that we surface on Bing depend on the venue you are searching for and your location. For instance, if you are in New York your Starbucks search results would be specific to that area and different than the results that someone might see if they search in San Francisco,” states Bing.
“Foursquare tips and recommendations are a great way to explore new places and we are very excited to incorporate them into the Bing sidebar,” Foursquare said in a statement.
In fact, this association marks the first phase of the new feature, though users will see an increase in frequency and volume of Foursquare content as the search engine refines the feature.
“This is just the beginning of Foursquare integration and is part of Bing’s continuous commitment to work with industry partners to make the social experience compelling and useful for customers,” a Bing spokeswoman said.
Going forward, social exploration hub Foursquare revamped its iOS and Android apps last month, improving tabs and check-in speed, as well as introducing personalized recommendations pushed directly to your mobile device.
This hallmark feature will be rolling out to all Bing users in the U.S. starting today, according to a Bing blog post. Hopefully, Bing will deploy this feature gradually to other countries as well soon.
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