The updated Bing Social Sidebar has something new to offer to users of the service. Microsoft claims to have infused it with a more streamlined design that is aimed at making it easier for users to find people that are pertinent to their searches based on what they’ve shared, blogged or tweeted about. This updated version is all set to start rolling out this week, complete with all the tweaks that we’ve mentioned below.
Through the feature, users will now be able to instantly get a glance of what has been shared by their friends, experts and enthusiasts from leading networks. These include Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Klout. This will in no way affect the main search results, as they will still be displayed on the right hand side, as usual. However, the left hand side, where the Bing Social Sidebar is located, will see a few design changes, according to a post on the search engine’s official blog.
Firstly, there will be no need for hovering over a friend or expert in order to look at additional content. On the contrary, the new features make the content available in such a way that users are able to see all of it in a glance. It gets placed inside a fresh section called ‘social results.’ Another design change is that the results have been left-justified so as to fill up the blank space on the page. And for those who wish to see additional social results, Microsoft has also introduced a ‘+ see all’ icon which enables users to receive more information.
Commenced earlier this year, the social features of the search engine allow users to search for and get real-time information from sites like Twitter and Facebook. It is also able to provide ‘best match’ and ‘social captions’ functionalities which prioritize the results based on relevance and contexts. The public feeds that are rendered by the service feature content from the previous seven days.
The newly updated Bing Social Sidebar has already been dished out in a number of countries, and will continue being rolled out through this whole week.