Tag: social search

Bing Gets More Tightly Integrated With Facebook

Bing has added a bit more Facebook integration to its social search features. Now, you can comment on and like Facebook content right from Bing.

“Bing already lets you view Facebook updates and comments from your friends in sidebar, but now you’ll also be able to add your own Likes and comments to your friends’ Facebook posts directly from Bing,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is yet another step in Bing’s efforts to make it easier for people to leverage all of the incredible information across the web and content within their social networks to help them spend less time searching and more time doing.”

“Say you’re a huge Beyoncé fan and are searching Bing to see what she’s up to, such as the latest on her trip to Cuba,” the spokesperson says. “While searching, you see a post in Bing’s sidebar from a Facebook friend who has an extra ticket to the sold out Beyoncé concert this week. With Bing, you can now comment on your friend’s Facebook post in one step, directly in sidebar, and claim the extra ticket. You’ve gone from simply browsing for news to attending the concert in one simple step. With Bing’s social search you can connect with your friends and engage with your social world to get things done – all in one spot.”

Of course none of this applies to the “Bing it On” challenge, which Microsoft just kicked off a new campaign for. The site, which lets you do side-by-side blind comparisons between Google and Bing results, strips out special features from each search engine, including Bing’s Facebook integration and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Bing continues to be a major partner of Facebook’s, also providing the web search results to Facebook’s Graph Search.

May 10, 2013
Bing Gives ‘Friends’ Photos’ Facebook Feature A Makeover

Bing announced that it has made some adjustments to the Friends’ Photos social search feature it launched last year. Updates include a new look and interface and a new “slideshow mode”.

“You may be familiar with the modern user interface design principles that serve as the foundation for Windows 8, Windows Phone and Xbox Live,” says Bing Social program manager MK Li. “We’ve introducing a new tile layout that marries design and performance, making it faster and more seamless to browse your friends’ photos.”

Here’s what that looks like:

“Now simply by clicking on a photo, you will enter slide show mode where you can see more photos from your Facebook friends that match your search. From there, you can also search for additional photos, or simply browse,” says Li.

Of course Facebook has its own new way of browsing your friends’ photos, with Graph Search, which is still slowly rolling out to users.

February 18, 2013
Facebook And Google Aren’t Talking Much

Just because Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he would love to work with Google, don’t expect the two to be cozying up anytime soon.

When Facebook unveiled Graph Search earlier this month, Zuck was quoted as saying he would “love” to work with the search giant, even as the social network has a partnership in place with Bing. That’s probably not something Bing really wanted to hear him say, but who can blame him for the sentiments. Corporate politics aside, it makes too much sense for the company with all the social data, entering the search realm, to covet the power of the search engine that most people actually use. Likewise, it would make a great deal of sense for Google to covet the data from the social network everyone uses. Google+ growth has been impressive, but nobody would dare joke about it being able to offer the social and personal insight into users’ lives that Facebook can.

The subject of the two companies working together inevitably came up in the Q&A session of Facebook’s earnings conference call on Wednesday. Long story short, the two companies aren’t really talking. Zuckerberg is quoted as saying, “Our relationship isn’t one where the companies really talk.”

Business Insider recaps:

However, he pointed out, because Google has a relatively open approach to its platforms, like its Android mobile operating system, Facebook is able to do more with its Android mobile app than it can on its iPhone app—even though its relationship with Apple is warmer. (He gave the example of being able to integrate text messages into the Facebook Messenger app on Android, which Facebook can’t do on Apple’s iOS mobile operating system.)

The two companies have been competitors for a while now (and we’ve seen how Facebook is treating competitors these days), but that doesn’t mean a partnership couldn’t benefit both companies. It would certainly benefit users, which both seem rather keen on doing. Still, it’s not looking like we’re going to be seeing Zuckerberg and Larry Page going for a long walk on the beach anytime soon.

January 31, 2013
Facebook Blocks Yandex’s New Wonder App (And Twitter’s Vine) From Data

On Thursday, Russian search company Yandex launched a new social search app for the iPhone, called Wonder. The app relied on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, iTunes and Last.fm data. Unfortunately for Yandex, Facebook pulled access to its data, which was kind of a key feature.

In fact, Facebook has been putting the kibosh on a number of apps it sees as potential competitors when it comes to API access, as Josh Constine at TechCrunch reports, citing Twitter’s new Vine video app and Voxer as other casualties, as both were cut off from Facebook’s Find Friends API, which lets apps give users access to their Facebook friends.

Facebook’s Platform policy says, “Competing social networks: (a) You may not use Facebook Platform to export user data into a competing social network without our permission; (b) Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social network.”

It also says, “You must not include data obtained from us in any search engine or directory without our written permission.” Constine shares a statement it receive from Yandex before Facebook even blocked its access:

We note that Yandex is not in violation of Facebook Platform Policies providing for restriction to use data obtained from Facebook in a search engine or directory for the reason that Wonder is not a search engine or a directory. Our application is a personal assistant that helps browse and organize information that is exclusively available to and associated with relevant account of the relevant user in various social networks and services.

On the contrary, [a] search engine is conventionally understood as an information location tool which automatically indexes tens of thousands of publicly available websites, fetches information with unrestricted access and is freely accessible to any Internet user. In addition, we would like to note that Wonder requests [a] user for specific permission to access each portion of information available to the user through a social network or services and never accesses information or data which is beyond the consent, availability for or extent of permission expressly granted by the application user. It is further to be noted, that the application does not perform any automated operations, unless these are specifically permitted by the user.

Clearly, Yandex saw this as a potential problem, and launched anyway, but based on the nature of the app, and how it is coinciding with the roll-out of Facebook’s own Graph Search, it’s no surprise that Facebook would view it as a competitor.

The companies are reportedly in talks about how to proceed with the app, but if Facebook doesn’t budge, it’s not going to make Wonder nearly as attractive to users as it may have been otherwise (and the jury was still out on that anyway). Apparently, Wonder can still operate with the other aforementioned networks’ data (for now), and that even includes Facebook’s Instagram. The real social data, as we all know, however, is in Facebook itself.

January 25, 2013
Yandex Launches Social Search App Wonder Aimed At US

Update: Facebook has pulled data from Wonder. More here.

Russian search engine company Yandex has launched a new social search app for the iPhone and iPod Touch for people in the U.S. It’s called Wonder, and taps into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, iTunes, and Last.fm to provide answers to questions based on data from your friends, as well as location and music info and options (such as previewing and purchasing songs).

Take a look:

Wonder by Yandex Labs from Yandex Labs on Vimeo.

The app uses natural language voice search first and foremost, but includes a keyboard input option. Right now, it only works in English and understands a few types of questions pertaining to places, music and news. It utilizes speech recognition and text-to-speech technology from Nuance Communications. Here are some examples Yandex provides for the types of questions it works for:

– If you are looking for a proven sushi place in New York, you can just ask: what sushi restaurants do my friends go to in New York?

– When you are looking for coffee shops in a new area, you can ask: coffee shops nearby.

– If you need to catch up with your friends on a Friday night, just ask: where do my friends party?

– You know your friend John has a good taste for music, ask: what music does John listen to?

– Feel like listening to electronic music, ask: I wonder what electronic music are my friends listening to?

– Want to catch up on news, ask: news shared by my friends.

Wonder’s launch comes at an interesting time, amidst a slow roll-out of Facebook’s own attempt at social search. Of course this is a mobile app, and Facebook’s launch does not include mobile (though that will come in time). It’s unclear whether or not Yandex intends to release Wonder on Android.

January 24, 2013
With Graph Search, We’ll See How Important Social Signals Are To Relevance

On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled Graph Search, an early version of a new kind of social search that will only grow as Facebook adds to it. With this, we should finally get to see just how helpful social signals are to search. It’s been a topic of debate, particularly since Google launched Search Plus Your World (its take on social search, tapping into is Google+ network, along with some other less obvious sources), but the problem with Google’s social search has always been its lack of social engagement, at least compared to Facebook.

We had a brief discussion with blekko CEO Rich Skrenta on the implications fo Facebook’s new offering and social search. He tells us social signals are “critical” for search relevance.

“PageRank originally measured the web’s primary social signal — links,” he says. “Facebook has even better social data which would be great for ranking recommendations. And they could be personalized to you, based on your friends.”

Since the Graph Search announcement, there have been countless articles dissecting the offering with mixed reviews. Some think it’s boring, and some think it’s a major new offering from the social network.

Skrenta says, “It’s a strong start for what is very intriguing product. I’m sure it will evolve over time as well and become even more interesting.”

Of course, much of the conversation has been centered around Facebook competing with Google. Obviously, this isn’t going to kill Google out of the box, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will kill Google in the long run. That doesn’t mean it can’t chip away a piece of Google’s pie. We discussed that more here.

“Facebook Graph Search addresses a completely new class of searches that you can’t do today on Google,” says Skrenta. “So I don’t think it will affect Google at all.”

True enough that Graph Search can tap into a new kind of search, but it does bring along certain kinds of vertical search implications along with it in my opinion, particularly local search. One also has to wonder what it might mean for Bing, which supplements Facebook’s search offering with the kind of search it can’t provide on its own.

Skrenta wouldn’t comment on what it might mean for Bing.

When asked what it might mean for smaller players in search like DuckDuckGo, or his own blekko, Skrenta says, “We love to see innovation around new search products. Facebook has launched something totally new and interesting. I’m eager to see how the product develops over time.”

Speaking of new products, Skrenta’s blekko launched izik a couple weeks ago, bringing a new approach to tablet search.

January 16, 2013
Bing Redesigns The Social Sidebar

Bing announced today that it has redesigned the social sidebar, the third column of the three-column design it launched for its search results pages earlier this year.

“Today we’re rolling a new streamlined design for our social sidebar feature making it easier to find people who are relevant to your search based on what they’ve shared, publically blogged or tweeted about,” says Bing. “In a glance you can now see friends, experts and enthusiasts from leading networks including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Klout have shared. While the sidebar will remain off to the right of search results – allowing you to decide when and how to interact with it – we’ve made some changes to the design.”

Users no longer have to hover over a friend or expert to see additional content. Bing will now show the content, marked as social results. They’ve also justified the results so there is less blank space on the page. Additionally, they’ve added a “+ see all” icon that lets you get more info.

On Monday, Bing launched a couple more information categories for the middle column – people and places.

December 11, 2012
Larry Page Talks Social Signals In Search

Google CEO Larry Page spoke this week at Zeitgeist Americas 2012. You can watch the whole video here. Towards the end of the nearly 40-minute talk, an audience member from the Google Science Fair asked him about social signals in search.

“I was wondering how you thought the role of emerging social media would impact the future search algorithms,” she said.

“I think it’s really important to know, again, who you’re with, what the community is – it’s really important to share things,” Page responded. “It’s really important to know the identity of people so you can share things and comment on things and improve the search ecosystem, you know, as you – as a real person…I think all those things are absolutely crucial.”

“That’s why we’ve worked so hard on Google+, on making [it] an important part of search,” he continued. “Again, like Maps, we don’t see that as like something that’s like a separate dimension that’s never going to play into search. When you search for things, you want to know the kinds of things your friends have looked at, or recommended, or wrote about, or shared. I think that’s just kind of an obvious thing.”

“So I think in general, if the Internet’s working well, the information that’s available is shared with lots of different people and different companies and turned into experiences that work well for everyone,” he said. “You know, Google’s gotten where it is by searching all the world’s information, not just a little bit of it, right? And in general, I think people have been motivated to get that information searchable, because then we deliver users to those people with information.”

“So in general, I think that’s the right way to run the Internet as a healthy ecosystem,” Page concluded. “I think social data is obviously important and useful for that. We’d love to make use of that every way we can.”

Of course Google is severely lacking access to a great amount of social data via the world’s biggest social network, Facebook (which recently surpassed a billion active users). Google is also doing more poorly in delivering realtime social data via Twitter, since the deal the two companies had previously, fell apart last year.

It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of progress Google is able to make in social search in the future, beyond the signals it is getting from Google+. Twitter actually made a move recently by launching a user profile directory, which some think may actually help increase the visibility of Twitter users in Google results.

Google is also experimenting with email, which some might consider to be the original online social media tool, in search results. Google expanded a field trial for Gmail results in web search results this week, even adding Google Drive and Google Calendar data to the mix.

October 17, 2012
Bing Adds News Authors To Sidebar

Bing announced today that it has launched a new section for the Bing sidebar to showcase journalists, writers and authors of news stories. Now, when you search for any given topic on Bing, along with the Facebook-powered social results, you’ll see stuff from authors who have discussed the topic.

I suppose this is Bing’s response to Google’s authorship (which Google is indicating will become a more powerful signal in the future). Instead of integrating the results into the central search experience, however, Bing has elected to showcase authors to the side.

“Bing’s sidebar helps connect you to these types of people; people who are knowledgeable on the topic you’re searching for including friends you know and experts and enthusiasts you may or may not be familiar with,” says Nathan Penner, Senior Program Manager for the Bing News Team. “Now, when you search for a topic, authors who frequently write articles related to your query will appear alongside other experts and enthusiasts in the sidebar. Hover over the person’s name to learn more about them, see their top articles related to your query, or link to their Twitter page.”

“While the sidebar provides a summary for some authors, you’ll see a link to “See all articles” which takes you to that author’s articles related to your query right in Bing. We’re just beginning to surface the countless number of authors out there to build this feature, so while we won’t have author pages for everyone, we’re hard at work to grow our coverage so stay tuned.”

Bing doesn’t mention any markup for authors to implement the way Google does. It does appear to be relying primarily on Twitter for its author info. The bios (at least for the ones I looked at) are drawn from Twitter, and a lot of them include recent tweets. Some also include Klout scores.

Speaking of which, Bing and Klout just announced a partnership last week. Clearly, Bing is looking to make as much use of it as possible.

October 5, 2012
Bing Invests In Klout, Adds It To Social Sidebar

Bing announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Klout, including an strategic investment in the company. This, a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, is aimed at “strengthening social influence data on both the Bing and Klout platforms.”

“There will be more to come down the road,” he says, but the first things users will notice about the partnership are Klout data surfacing on Bing’s sidebar and highlights from Bing surfacing in the “moments” section of some people’s Klout profiles.

On the Bing sidebar, you might see a persona’s Klout score and topics they’re influential about. “This will help people connect with the right experts on the things they’re searching for,” the Bing spokesperson says.

Regarding the Bing “highlights” on Klout, he adds, “These Bing ‘highlights’ may include the number of times a person shows up as an expert in the ‘People Who Know’ section of Bing’s sidebar or the volume/frequency of searches for that person, demonstrating how search can be a powerful new indicator of online influence.”

“This is just the beginning of a new partnership between the two companies, and another great example of Bing’s commitment to working with industry partners to not only expand its social experience and help people do more with search, but to bring search as a signal into other social experiences,” he says.

It’s unclear how much Microsoft has invested in Klout. Update: Microsoft gave us the following statement from Bing Corporate Vice President, Derrick Connell: “We aren’t disclosing specific terms of the investment.”

Michael Arrington of CrunchFund, an investor in Klout, says, “The reason Klout was able to get a deal like this done is because they have a lot (a whole lot) of data on people. This data, along with the fact that they remain a neutral party working with all the giants, allows them to create a sort of Page Rank that tells others how influental you are in given areas.”

According to Eric Eldon at TechCrunch, the deal is not exclusive, indicating that Klout could, theoretically, become a ranking factor in Google.

Since rolling out the social sidebar back in May, Bing has added several new features, including Quora and Foursquare data.

September 27, 2012
Wajam Hits iPhone, Adds Friends To Search On Google Maps, Safari

Social search provider Wajam has launched on the iPhone with a new feature, which adds recommendations from your friends directly in Google Maps and Safari on the iPhone.

“The breakthrough is that we can insert social content in third-party apps (Google Maps and Safari), something that is impossible to do with the current Apple SDK,” CEO Martin-Luc Archambault tells WebProNews. “We have a patent pending on this technology.”

Here’s a look:

“I think Apps should be able to communicate between each other and I think with this release, we are showing how amazing your phone would be if Apple, Facebook and Google were friends and wanted to do business together,” Archambault adds.

Wajam takes advantage of your friends from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in search results.

The company says in a blog post:

The new mobile-enhanced version of Wajam is TRUSTe Certified, adding to the highest security certifications from TRUSTe, McAfee and Norton we’ve already received for our Social Search Everywhere browser extension.

To use Wajam from the iPhone, simply go to wajam.com from your device.

August 29, 2012
Bing Has A Special Place For Quora In Search Results

Bing announced today that it is adding Quora content to the social sidebar, which it introduced earlier this year. Users will see top Quora contributors related to query topics in the “People Who Know” section.

Users can hover over the contributor’s name to find out more info, or to click and go directly to the answers that contributor has shared.

The feature is only available in the U.S.

Quora should be getting a lot more exposure thanks to not only this new Bing integration, but another move the company made this week. Quora announced the launch of embeddable quotes, which will enable blogs and sites to easily embed Quora content. More on that here.

In May, Quora announced a $50 million Series B round of funding. The company said it intends to build its team, scale up technically, and focus on the long term. more details on that here.

August 22, 2012
Bing Gets Facebook Friend Tagging

Bing has announced a new social feature, which allows you to tag your Facebook friends when you share a search you’ve performed.

As you may recall, Bing launched a new design a couple months back, complete with some new social features, allowing you to place your search experience and Facebook experience closer to one another than ever before. This new feature appears to be just an extension of that, making use of popular Facebook functionality.

“When searching on Bing, simply enter a question or comment in the sidebar and type the name of a friend on Facebook to tag him or her (you can tag up to five friends at a time),” explains Bing Social Program Manager Kim Vlcek. “With your permission, the question will post on your Facebook timeline, and your tagged friends will be notified so that they can pitch in and help you find what you’re looking for. Remember – you are always in control of what you share through the sidebar.”

Have you used Bing’s social features much? Have you found access to Facebook friends from the search engine to be effective in helping you find what you’re looking for?

This is just the latest in various companies’ attempts to make search more social. Last week, we saw a new feature (which may just be in test mode) where Google is placing more Google+ content into search results.

Wajam, which you can install as a browser add-on has added new social shopping features.

July 30, 2012
Wajam Aims To Make Your Online Shopping Experience More Useful

Wajam is launching a new feature for social shopping. If you’re unfamiliar with Wajam itself, it’s a browser extension that adds social search results to your search experience across the major search engines and other sites including Amazon, Yelp, YouTube, eBay and others. The company has now partnered with Shopping.com to offer consumers a comparison shopping experience service from more than 3,500 merchants. Of course it also includes data from your friends, much like the traditional Wajam experience.

“The biggest advantage of Wajam Social Shopping is that we are giving users reviews and recommendations from people they trust, instead of strangers,” CEO Martin-Luc Archambault tells WebProNews.

According to Wajam, 90% of people consult with a friend or expert before making a decision.

“I actually purchased a baby carrier after seeing a tweet,” says Archambault, when asked to provide an example of when he has used his friends online activity to help make a purchasing decision. “And I frequently book hotels based on my friends’ online recommendations.”

Archambault says Wajam is working on mobile, but doesn’t have any news on a launch date.

More on the Wajam blog.

July 23, 2012
Bing Social Search Doesn’t Want to Assume That Your Friends Are Experts

Bing’s new three-column search interface has been kicking around the innernets for about a month now, integrating people’s Facebook and Twitter networks into queries so as to provide a social feature to search results. While it’s been interesting seeing what all my friends think they know about certain subjects, I’m not always certain I can take their word at face value (or maybe I don’t want to take their word at all). Luckily, there’s a second component to Bing’s social search that incorporates information from people who actually know a thing or two about a thing or two. Paul Yiu and the Bing Social Search Team gave a little more insight about how Bing populates its social results not only from your friends but from known trusted sources, too.

Essentially, Bing’s social search results are divided into two categories: Friends Who Might Know and People Who Know. While those categories could be vague synonyms from each other (assuming your friends are in fact people), the Friends Who Might Know category includes all of your direct contacts from your Facebook account who may have posted recently about your search topic or may even have it listed as one of their interests. The People Who Know is more affirmative for a reason: this section includes experts and enthusiasts who maintain some manner of influence or authority on your search topic. This will consist of results from Twitter and blogs.

For example, when I searched “New York City” on Bing, I got the following results:

While my single Facebook friend who likes New York City might be able to recommend a couple of places, it’s also helpful to have, say, the input of Gael Greene since she’s a pretty seasoned restaurant critic in the Big Apple. I also got a few reporters from the Times that write about NYC-related topics, so again, that could be interesting to follow-up on for more current goings-on in the city.

According to Yiu, People Who Know differs from it’s counterpart in that this category will be the same for all Bing users. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to have different authorities for different users when the search is on the same subject, right? Since there is a lack of support from your immediate social network, Bing stacks up the experts according to the following metrics:
Followers in Twitter, and how many there are
How influential the person is in general, i.e., how much does he or she get re-tweeted
Who he or she follows on Twitter
The likelihood that the Twitter user is a spammer based on peculiarities in his or her connectivity graph.

The way Bing identifies authorities on topics involves the search engine’s machine learning techniques that assess if and how people are popular for a specific topic and not just popular for the sake of itself. To highlight this fact, Yiu produced a rather satisfying example of this: “For example, Kim Kardashian is influential on Twitter but probably won’t appear for the query ‘machine learning.’” Hopefully, you never search for anything that gives Bing any reason to provide you with social search results from any Kardashian.

More about how to meaningfully use Bing’s social search results can be found on the Help forum for Bing.

[Via Bing Search Blog.]

July 2, 2012

Here’s a strange sequence of events: no sooner did I post that teaser from Bing’s Facebook page about something being announced today, possibly at Microsoft’s big media event, a post in Bing’s Search Blog appeared in my RSS reader. That in itself isn’t strange, but when I click on the link to visit the page of the actual blog post, the link is dead. So was the blog not supposed to be updated just yet, hence it being taken down (and does the fact that it possibly appeared before it was scheduled to qualify the information as a leak)?

The timestamp on the post, according to my reader, is 12:21PM EST. Authored by Bing Marketing Manager Maggie Adams, the full blog post follows:

As part of the Bing Summer of Doing, we are launching a new site today to inspire you to make the most of your summer. Every day we’ll showcase a new daily activity to motivate you to learn more while giving you a chance to win cool prizes. Check out the site each day at bing.com/doing, or follow along at #summerofdoing.

Every week we will have a new theme including DIY-ing, eating, celebrating, giving back, wander-lusting, riding, jamming, and more. Each day of the week will present a new Bing search and new opportunity to be inspired to do something.

For example, for DIY-ing week, you can hone your DIY skills including, yarn bombing, home brewing, vertical gardening, canning, and cheese making. For eating week, you can nosh and nibble your way via food trucking, dim summing, locavoring, wine tasting, picnicking and more.

Each week you have a chance to win fabulous prizes. From the chance to become a master chef via culinary classes, receiving an amazing DIY kit, winning an amazing party, or making a difference in your community – the Bing Summer of Doing has you covered.

Check it out and good luck!

– Maggie Adams, Marketing Manager, Bing

While the blog post appears to have been taken down, bing.com/doing is a live site. Here’s a screenshot of the homepage:

As you can see in the homepage, the site is geared towards prompting people to do more physical or manual activities as a product of what they search for on Bing with incentives promised through Bing Rewards. Today’s “doing” image pertains to do-it-yourself projects.

Clicking on the “doing” image, I’m prompted to sign into Bing with my Facebook account. Everything’s becoming clear now: Bing is not only trying to encourage users to be a little more active this summer (ironically, away from their computer) but is promoting its new social search feature simultaneously. Once I’m redirected to a search of “diy crafts” on Bing, I see the following box appear:

So by trying to do more physical or creative activities this summer, and by incorporating my online social network with these activities, I’m eligible for weekly prizes.

Very crafty indeed, Bing.

As a postscript, we contacted Bing for comment on the new initiative/webpage, but as of this article’s publication we haven’t received any information.

Again, not confirming this Bing blog announcement was released prematurely, but it’s conspicuous absence now seems to suggest it wasn’t supposed to go live just yet. Stay tuned for Microsoft’s conference later today to see if they push the new bing.com/doing site or if this indeed is separate from the media event.