Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Bing Search Gets Social with Facebook

By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Microsoft has turned its Bing search engine more social, bringing live feeds from Facebook right into its search results. The move is the latest move in Microsoft’s recent efforts to enhance the Bing experience and search capabilities. According to Microsoft, Bing is the first search engine to incorporate the Facebook “firehose” of status updates, shared links, and non-page content right in its search results.

Last October, Bing announced a deal to bring Twitter’s “firehose” of real-time tweets into Bing search results. The new Facebook integration builds on that idea, adding Facebook fan page updates as well as popular links posted by Facebook users with their status updates visible to the world. Mindful of recent privacy concerns surrounding Facebook, Microsoft is quick to note that material from non-fan pages is only used if it’s specifically shared with the whole world, and no names, photos, or text associated with the link gets published…or, if there’s no much information to accompany a link, Bing might show an aggregate number of people who have shared a particular link.

Recommended Videos

Alongside the Facebook status information, Bing has updated its home page to show trending topics extracted from both Twitter and Facebook’s firehose feeds, so users can get an immediate glance at what’s hot on both social networking services. Bing also tries to show some context about why trending topics might be important or interesting, along with a sample of search results from its social media.

Microsoft says it plans to add more features to it’s “social vertical” soon, meaning more integration with social media and real-time status feeds. This might be great news for folks who live and die by what’s trending on social media sites, but for folks who think it’s mostly hooey—and, face it, social media is not exempt from Sturgeon’s Law—there doesn’t appear to be any way for users not to have Bing throw social media in their faces.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
How to get GPT-4 for free
The ChatGPT website on a laptop's screen as the laptop sits on a counter in front of a black background.

The GPT-4 language model OpenAI uses in its flagship ChatGPT chatbot, is a marvel of modern artificial intelligence (AI) development. But if you want to use it, you need to sign up for ChatGPT Plus, a $20 per month subscription tier. Or do you? There are ways to use GPT-4 for free. There's not even much of a catch. It's just available for free elsewhere.

Here are the best ways to start using GPT4 for free, right now.

Read more
Ends tonight: Get 42% off a year subscription to Microsoft 365
Office 365 Apps on an orange background.

For a complete set of productivity apps that will be familiar to most people, you may want to take advantage of this offer from HP -- a 42% discount on a one-year subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal, which brings its price down to just $40 from its original price of $70. That's $30 in savings on software and services that will be helpful to both professionals and students. You're going to have to hurry in completing the transaction if you're interested though, as there's not much time left before the bargain gets taken down.

Why you should buy Microsoft 365 Personal
Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365, is a subscription service that gives you access to all of the brand's most popular productivity apps, among other things. If you sign up for Microsoft 365 Personal, not only will you be able to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote, but you'll also get 1TB of cloud storage where you can save your files and access them from anywhere, as well as protection from Microsoft Defender. Any software updates will be done automatically, so you won't have to keep checking if there are any newer versions yourself.

Read more
What does a check mark mean on Facebook Messenger?
A series of social media app icons on a colorful smartphone screen.

If you've ever sent a message to a friend on Facebook Messenger, you've probably noticed a little check mark icon next to the message you sent.

They're nothing to worry about, but these check mark icons do offer up a little information on the status of the Messenger messages you send. Want to know what each of these check mark icons means? Keep reading to find out.
What does a check mark mean on Messenger?

Read more