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The New Bing

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Bing has been reinvented, offering enhanced search results that tap into the power of social media. Microsoft has done this by pulling people out of search results and putting them in their place: A right-hand social column that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. It even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing.

It’s something of an about-face for the Number 2 search engine, which up until earlier this year has been slowly but surely integrating Facebook information (like “Likes”) directly into Bing Search results. This update is actually Phase 2 of a major overhaul. Bing quietly rolled out the first part last week. It stripped away the right column of results information (leaving a large white well) and moved a more concise “Related Searches” to a small middle column. Facebook Likes results integration remained, but appeared as a more subtle, gray thumbs-up next to the result, and there was a lot of white space on the right.

Starting today, some of Bing’s reported network of 100 million users will see a new column filling that space: The “What Your Friends May Know” social sidebar. For now, the sidebar only works with Facebook, but even with just that one network, the level of integration is quite intense. To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query.

Bing Exec Derrick Connell told me the goal of the new Bing is to “surface people, not web pages.”

In the social pane, there’s also an “Ask friends…” with a small Facebook icon next to it. Here, you type a question possibly related to your search. When you click within the field, a link icon appears next to your search results on the left; click any of them to add them to your Facebook posts. You can also ask those experts and friends to assist in your search. A tiny person-plus icon appears next to each of them. Click one (or more) and they will get a notification about your query.

How does Bing build these “Friends Who Might Know” lists? Microsoft execs explained they’re leveraging as much publicly available data as possible from Facebook (for now) and soon Twitter and other networks. Inclusion in the list is not necessarily based on something you posted about the topic. The sidebar includes people you know through your social networks that have, say, posted a photo about the topic, liked a certain relevant topic or searched for a similar topic in Bing, and people you don’t know, who are, for example, known Topic Experts and Enthusiasts (identified by Bing). All of them could be considered helpful in your quest for knowledge. Conversations revolving around a query topic are viewable through the social pane — you just hover over the activity and a small box will slide out to the left with the original post. You can add comments in any conversation in the activity pane or see the conversation in the slideout.

Not all public posts on these social networks can be scrapped in, so Microsoft turned, first, to its close friend Facebook. Thanks to that close relationship, Microsoft gets “a set of public data that’s part of the fire hose deal with Facebook,” Microsoft’s Connell told me. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was, according to Microsoft, shown the project and liked it. He was even happy to see the other social networks in the mix.

Eventually the Social Sidebar will add Twitter data. Microsoft says it has access to at least 6 months of publicly-available posts.

Google+ content should make an appearance, too, though it will only be what Microsoft can scrap in. It’s unlikely Google will ever agree to share its private network data with Microsoft. Google is heavily invested in deep integration between Google+ and its own search engine, having launched Search plus Your World earlier this year.

Despite all the new guidance from friends and experts, Bing still wants to help search users with more-targeted results. So it’s taking that somewhat sparse second column and introducing “What Bing Knows” or snapshot (Get it? The first column is “What the Web Knows,” The second column is “What Bing Knows” and the third is “What Your Friends Know”). This well won’t fill up for every search — instead, Microsoft identified four key areas of where it can help: Restaurants, Hotels, Movies and Events and People. The results in this area will include action items like restaurant and hotel reservations. In People, Bing will search across multiple social networks help you find the right person. These features were not available to test at press time.

Microsoft’s goal with all these changes? One, to clean up Bing. The company admits the page was getting too cluttered — it had assumed Web pages would be getting taller and thinner, when in fact, everything is getting shorter and wider. However, one of the key reasons for the change was to “stop corrupting the [search] experience with people,” said a Bing exec. That might also be a subtle dig at Google and its people-populated Search plus Your World. Bing execs also repeatedly said they think users want people — not Web pages — to help them.

There was also some direct criticism of Google. Microsoft execs said the difference between Bing and Google is Microsoft’s product is open while Google’s is closed. When Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Launched, Google faced some criticism for not surfacing Twitter and Facebook results. Bolstered by Bing’s 300 million entities in its database, Microsoft execs contend that its approach is more valuable than Google’s “pure semantic-based model” because it offers pure search information, letting users get info from topic experts. Additionally, Microsoft includes structured data around core topics that are of interest to the broadest set of people.

But Does It Work

I’ve been running the new Bing for a few days now and can report that it more or less works as advertised. First of all, the search results interface is the cleanest I’ve seen it in years. Yes, it looks almost Google-like. I tried a bunch of searches like “Barcelona,” “Tesla,” and “Broadway.” In each case, my “Friends Who Might Know” field in the Social pane filled up with people who had, for instance, posted photos of Nicola Tesla, or “Liked” the “Broadway League.” I was able to blend links and questions in the open field above and then post directly to my Facebook page, along with notifications to my individual friends and experts. No one has answered yet, but those seeing these queries were part of a fairly small beta group.

I noticed, by the way, that when I put in multi-word queries, I got few, if any, “Friends Who Might Know” results.

In Facebook, I did have to install the Bing App. It defaults to sharing your posts with Everyone. If you do a lot of searching, you may want to dial that down a bit.

If you’re usually logged into Facebook and often turn to friends for, say, travel or buying advice, this could be a useful tool for you. Microsoft contends that this is a natural way to find answers. They do not want to reinvent the web, Bing execs explained, “We don’t have to own it to surface it. The beauty of the Internet is you don’t have to be a social network to surface people, you don’t have to be a hotel to surface reservations.”

You may not see the What Your Friends Know or Social Sidebar in Bing for a while — Microsoft said it’ll be rolling this out slowly — but starting today you can visit http://www.bing.com/new to sign up for availability notification.

With this update, the competing search philosophies are clearer than ever. Google sees the world as a deep blend of data, people and activities, all of which can be mined simultaneously for a rich and useful experience. Bing sees a more structured world, where social interactions, while extremely helpful, are kept a safe distance from the core results you desire. Which approach is right? Let us know what you think in the comments.

For more details, check out the video where Microsoft explains the Bing update.

Video: Bing Originals: Search goes social

More About: bing, Facebook, Google, microsoft, Search, Twitter