Microsoft’s Bing adds Facebook commenting and Like actions to its social sidebar

Microsoft on Friday announced it has once again expanded Bing’s Facebook integration. Not only can you see relevant Facebook posts in the search engine’s social sidebar, but you can now comment on them and Like them as well.

Bing has included Likes, photos, and profile information from Facebook for a while in its social sidebar. At the start of the year, Microsoft added status updates, shared links, and comments for more context. Now it’s letting you interact with said content, all without leaving the Bing search page.

Here’s the commenting feature in action:

Nektarios Ioannides, Bing’s Program Manager, offers an example to explain how this could potentially improve your search experience:

Let’s say I’m searching for Beyoncé tickets because I know she is coming to town soon. I can see that my friend has recently posted that she has an extra ticket to the show. Now without leaving the Bing results page, I comment directly to her post letting her know that I’d love to join her for the concert. I’ve gone from simply browsing to attending a concert in just a few easy steps – all thanks to Bing.

All of this will only work if you connect your Facebook account to Bing. Microsoft has previously promised to “honor all of your existing Facebook privacy settings, nothing is shared automatically, you only see what your friends give you permission to see (though their Facebook settings) so you only share what you want to share.”

Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t shared data in regards to how many Bing users have actually gone and connected their Facebook account to Bing. Either Microsoft is extremely confident that its social search strategy will pay off, or users are actually taking advantage and the company is finding it worth the engineering resources to keep adding more and more Facebook features to Bing. Time will tell.

See also – Microsoft: Facebook’s Graph Search is a “unified search experience” with Bing technology

Top Image credit: Leszek Nowak