Bing and Facebook: A marriage of tech minds

Another day another massive tech announcement, this time between Bing and Facebook…

Last night the tech powerhouses joined forces to announce that Facebook ‘likes’ would be integrated into the search engine, making the internet search experience well, more social.

Its currently being rolled out in the US and users there will now experience much more relevance when they search. Listings will now flag up brands and websites that their Facebook friends like, so if for instance I had flagged that I ‘like’ a hotel in London (let’s face it, I like going away!) then if my friends search for hotels in London the ones I have publicly liked will be flagged up in the search.

The same goes for people search, as this piece from MSNBC explains, if I wanted to search for old colleagues or school friends via Bing it will bring up people with who I have mutual friends or associations with on Facebook. Very clever.

Its further boosted by third party companies now being able to host a Facebook ‘like’ button on their own websites, thus creating a connection with their Facebook profile.

It comes just a couple of weeks after Google’s ‘Instant’ announcement and its fair to say that in following up with something so strongly associated with Facebook Bing are definitely raising their game in the search world.

We’ll report back again once its rolled out here…

Facebook: from computer screen to big screen

So I’ve never claimed to be a movie reviewer but I wanted to write following my latest trips to the flicks to see ‘The Social Network”.

Before I give my thoughts on the film I must admit I had my reservations. From a PR perspective would this be a massive error? Would you really let Hollywood highlight your company’s legal struggles (the film documents two court cases Facebook has been involved in) or out your CEO as, ironically, someone who is anti social?!

The film really does not disappoint, and Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayl of genius entrepreneur  and the world’s youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is fantastic. As you’ll have see from earlier posts I read a book on the Facebook story not long ago and this film really does stay close to the truth. Its a fabulous documentation of a wonderful business story and the opportunities that modern consumers, especially those living their lives online, present. It offers a great explaination as to the (accidental?) rationale behind the business and how it has grown.

That said, I really do think that there’ll be a lot of Facebook teen fans who wont like it, its focusses on the financials too much to please every Facebook users.

Give it a go though!

Right, that’s me off to get a job with Total Film…

Facebook reGroups

You might have heard that Facebook hosted a big announcement in Palo Alto today launching the new Facebook Groups.

You’re right in thinking that Groups have been a feature of Facebook for sometime and these will stay in existence but today’s announcement has introduced something much more integral which allows us to essentially compartmentalise our lives on Facebook.

To help differentiate, imagine that the current Groups identify the area you live in, the company you work for or a pop group you’re interested in. They’re established by third parties and the power and reputation of that third party, or shared interest, brings you together with other users. What new Groups does is makes YOU the shared interest. You are the collective reason that users are signing up to your group, it basically is identifying yourself as a member of a particular social circle.

If for example you wanted to group your family and use this special platform to share your photos, private events, etc this new area of Facebook will allow you to do so, same goes for work colleagues or friends. The All Facebook site has illustrated this brilliantly here. Other important factors are the ability to message your chosen groups collectively, or the big milestone Group Chat!

There are bound to be new changes and lessons with this feature along the way, especially the impact on pages and how business users of Facebook can use Groups from a marketing perspective. So keep your eye on sites like All Facebook and Mashable for more updates.

**UPDATE** According to Mashable we prefer Facebook Groups to Twitter lists…