Bing Up Their Game With Social Integration

Bing have released a nice little video highlighting their efforts to bring social signals and interactions into search. Check out a tour of the new features by Stephan Weitz, Director at Bing:

With only 10% market share (in the UK), Bing is an excellent position to try new features and experiment. This is sighted by Mark Zuckerberg as one of the reasons Facebook is happy to work with Microsoft – because they’re the underdog that can innovate.

For search marketers, the proposition from Bing can be seen as a handy predictor to what is going to happen with Google. The earlier businesses improve their social propositions and encourage their customers to share and interact, the better these companies will fare as search engine algorithms and features skew towards social.

For Bing itself, this is their chance to up their market share. I had the opportunity to ask Colm Bracken, Group Search Manager at Microsoft, about how they plan to grow their user base and he sighted innovation as key. Colm also added that they have big hopes for their mobile and Xbox products, which will in turn drive up use of Bing. I wish Microsoft luck with this one as a little competition in the UK search market can only be a good thing.

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