Gadgetory

hey this is Ellis with the verge microsoft today rolled out the new Bing to users worldwide so let's check it out so let's try a search for Windows Phone and as soon as the search shows up you'll see that the new Bing has been grouped into three columns there's search nose big nose and friends now so let's start with search nose so if you see this is kind of the same blue length search you've been used to you'll notice that there's some blank space over here which Microsoft got rid of last week as part of the UI update so here's kind of the same search you've been used to they tightened up the navigational bars up top so they're more relevant to exactly what you're doing and if you scroll down you can actually see things that friends on Facebook have liked and that's kind of the theme here is that the new Bing is tightly integrated with social and it's kind of trying to do what Google did with search plus your world but with facebook twitter and blogs and google+ as well if you look on the right side of the page you'll notice this real Metro strip right here which is the friends know area and if you see we just searched for windows phone so if you see my friend Harry Zhang actually has a photo of Windows Phone it looks like it's broken on facebook you can see chris ziegler likes Windows Phone other people like Windows Phone and then people who know which is actually Microsoft's intelligent algorithm to see who on Twitter knows something about Windows Phone so Paul Thurrott knows a lot about microsoft and windows see he might be a good person to ask you can actually see some of his tweets reply retweet and favorite right within this screen an activity isn't quite ready yet but it's supposed to show queries and questions people have been asking inside of being on facebook or inside the search engine the section right here is called snapshot and it's going to be rolling out over the next few weeks and it's going to show data just like what you'd be used to seeing in the search area like for example New York Knicks tickets this kind of data like prices for cars sports scores things like that like the map of a restaurant you're going to they're going to show up in the right sidebar and what Microsoft's really trying to do is take advantage of api's like this one to populate data without owning any of the data like Facebook or Twitter or something like that so this is the kind of thing that's going to show up in that new snapshot section that isn't available quite yet and depending on what you search for this is also where ads are going to show up either above or below the snapshot area which is called big nose so Microsoft is a bunch of scenarios in mind when you're searching so let's say you want to know about the strokes you might want to go to a concert coming up soon you might want to listen to some of their music so the first thing you see is that here's 14-year friends like the strokes and if you click that you can see their Facebook page and find out more but if you go over the right you can see friends who might know so Jesse Abrams has photos of the strokes that's actually pretty cool John likes the strokes Lyle likes the strokes maybe I ask these guys about them say should I go to this concert what song should I listen to because Microsoft knows that when you search for something there's not always an exact answer it might be more relatives in real life you might want to ask your friends like Kyle about strokes if you're really stumped you can click here ask friends what are the best songs by the strokes and you can also attach a link if you want people to check something out in particular sold attach their official page so you click that little link icon over here and you can attach that and this will actually post straight to Facebook and when people post answers then it'll show up in your activity feed right here if you're thinking about going on a hot date to the park don't know what it's going to be like you can look up Bryant Park you can see some attractions in Bryant Park you can see a map this is one of the things that's going to show up in snap shot right here once it rolls out completely and then you look over stephanie has photos of Bryant Park I could ask her about what it was like where I should go so if you want to ask somebody specific about their experience listening to a band or going to a park you can actually click the plus sign right here and say how was the park and if you you can add a link hit enter and Stephanie will be notified this will show up in her notifications menu on Facebook just as if she was tagged in a post or a picture of mine and she can respond that way another way you might want to test out the new Bing is by typing in the name of a restaurant or let's say you want new york pizza while like i said doesn't seem like the API is working completely yet like nobody's up here I'm sure some of my friends have taken pictures of pizza before almost positive of that none of them are showing up here but if you look here's another place that being checks for data so these are actually places on people places on Twitter that that is influential about the topic that you're looking for so depending on what you look up certain people and places might show up like let's say you want to know more about the verge being actually intelligently decides who might know about the virgin it's actually pretty accurate here you see Ross Paul Chris Neil I and Josh and I can't promise Josh would get back to you if you tweeted at him about his site but you can do it right from here and see see who's important you can also see my brother likes the site and I could ask him about it Jordan here is actually worked at the verge so here's another API call for for where somebody was employed and you can also see that with something like the New York Knicks not that any of these guys are going to tweet back at you but you got people who know about the next Jamie Lynn Baron Davis and Tyson Chandler we hope know about the Knicks that soccer another thing the new Bing is useful for is shopping you can see who owns something that you might want to get they've taken a picture with it so if you type in nike shoes you've got your results here from nike and some shopping results and if you look to the right here my friend corey actually has a photo of nike shoes so this kind of thing won't always be useful but it's nice to see Microsoft taking advantage of Facebook's and Twitter's and other API is to expand the breadth of social search so you can really see this data adding up to something in the long run and while there isn't much here Microsoft told us that they're really interested in expanding to cora linkedin Foursquare so if you wanted to look up the name of a restaurant like sunburst espresso bar you could actually see over here whose son so and so is checked in there then you could definitely ask them about it but as of right now it's pretty empty so all in all the new Bing is an interesting take on search and we actually think they were more successful than Google with search plus your world because Bing simply just brings in more social networks so we'd use this although it doesn't really include all the social data we would expect it to just yet but microsoft says they're adding hopefully going to add foursquare linkedin Korra and other social networks to really make the search experience even more rich and since it's not really obtrusive while you're searching it's a welcome addition