Hey! Bing is innovating! It has added social to search based on its relationship with Facebook. Oh wait, Google did that with Google+. So is this innovation or keeping up with the Joneses, err Pages and Brins? I thought this move by MS would happen faster given that FB and MS have been in bed together for some time. So did Google innovate while Microsoft and Facebook imitated? Maybe. Google certainly plays catch-up too. The real questions may turn on who executes and/or can execute better. That seems to be part of the innovation game too.
Facebook is top dog in social; Google in search. The thing they both (with MS lurking in the wings to make a big comeback (an odd thing given how well MS does as it is)) are doing is to take recommendations to a new level (with ads thrown in of course). I have tried logged in search. I must say I was surprised. To be clear, I find there is mainly rot in social network data just as there is in search. Whether I would have used Google+ had I not been at Google is unclear. Probably not. But I did. Then I searched for some law review articles and some basic technology information. WOW. The personal results at the top had links to blog posts by people whom I followed on Google + AND THEY WERE…RELEVANT. Blew my mind. My search time went down and I found credible sources faster. Will that last? Who knows? Someone may find ways to game the system, but the small experiences make me hopeful. Now to Facebook and Bing.
If Google can do well with a much smaller set of users for Google +, Facebook and Bing might do really well. After all, Facebook has the social piece and MS has some search computer science types. Whoever wins here may offer the next thing in search. I like conducting logged out searches and logged in. When logged in, I like the potential for seeing things from friends and people I trust. For example, if I start to be interested in cameras and search gives me posts by friends I’d ask anyway, that is a pretty cool result. I can read the post and call the friend for deeper advice or just use what they posted.
All in this space will, of course, cope with privacy concerns etc. But I think that this new level of relevance has the chance to co-exist with those concerns and users may flock to one of these services to have results well-beyond the current ones in search without social. In other words, let the games continue.