Bingbook +1
It's becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft and Facebook are closely allied against a common enemy - Google.
Facebook and Bing announced their integration last year, with the initial result being the display of links ‘liked' by your Facebook friends when you do a search. We were told that was just the start and now we're seeing phase two.
You can watch a summary of the new things in the video clip below, but in summary they amount to:
- Liked pages appearing in Bing searches. Erm, we thought they did that last October
- Increased prominence of pages that were liked by anyone on Facebook. Now that's more like it.
- Listing of Facebook accounts with a connection to a search. E.g. geographical.
- Easier posting of pages found via Bing onto Facebook. Yet another way of telling everyone what you're up to.
- A universal like button in the Bingbar. Enables you to like something even if it doesn't have a like button.
So Facebook is becoming increasingly prominent on Bing while, on many Google searches, you'll see pertinent links that have been retweeted by one of the people you follow on Twitter. Social has been the big thing in the Internet space for a while now and the looks like being a key battleground as Bing tries to take search market share from Google.
A quick search on Bing just now didn't reveal any obvious greater prominence given to Facebook, but it presumably will in time. What is clear is that Bing and Facebook are very much allied against Google and that Google is under increasing pressure to react, or risk being left behind in social. It will probably take more than just creating its own like button, and we expect to see calls for it to acquire Twitter become prominent once more.
