Now Bing, with the help of Foursquare data, will help you to find physical locations. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced today, that it has integrated Foursquare data into a sidebar column of Bing’s new avatar. So now, if you are searching for any location and your friend has already visited that location, and also has shared it publicly, you will be able to get that data to guide you.
According to Microsoft, the new integration will allow you to “find people who are knowledgeable about the place you’re searching, based on what they’ve publically shared on foursquare.”
Just two months back, Bing partnered with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter to roll out its new social sidebar that tied together social data from both. But the earlier integration is useful only in limited cases, compared to the potential boost that Foursquare integration has to offer.
While Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), despite focusing on Google+, seems slowly tracing back to a stronger emphasis on algorithmic results, Bing on the other hand, is working on the concept that that social search can provide more meaningful information. Compared to Google, which has only the Google+ network, Bing has an advantage of having access to data from Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other partners. Bing, which is the second most used search engine after Google, acknowledges that its target audience are between 18- to 34-year-old crowd that spends a lot of time on social networks. So, to capture that, Bing redesigned its search results pages for what it calls “search plus social.”
This is what a user might see when they run a search for a location that a friend had checked into:
This feature will start rolling out today. Bad news for users outside US is that for the time being, it will only be available in the U.S.
Bing’s social efforts are relatively new, and spokeswoman Kari Dilloo says Bing will learn and improve from consumer feedbacks.
