Google is a firm friend to social media, threading social technologies throughout its offerings, from the search engine itself to developments like Google+ and Search Plus Your World that scrapes social content to improve search results. Microsoft has responded and late last week revealed details of a major new version of its three year old Bing search engine that is more socially aware. It enables posts from social networks like Twitter and Facebook to be incorporated and users’ searches and opinions to be shared with their social networks.
It is a forward move and although it is not publically available yet, it should give Google pause for thought. What is particularly appealing is that unlike Google, Bing is agnostic in terms of social networks so it can access a variety of social media sites. This degree of openness could be enough to tempt users to explore the new offering. There would have to be a lot of exploration and subsequent adoption to undermine Google’s commanding position but if Microsoft can garner a reputation for openness while Google remains essentially a closed shop, it can make progress. The showdown will begin next month.
Social network agnosticism will also be an important feature in the emerging area of enterprise social media – the use of social media within the business for internal collaboration and communication. We will be publishing research into social media in the business environment soon.