Bing’s sister MSN portal launched a new social aggregator called msnNOW. In order to compete with the mainstream media, the sub-portal site aggregates breaking news stories and hot topics from Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and BreakingNews.com and highlights the most current trends in real-time. With its in-house editors and team of experts, msnNOW will provide more insights on web’s hottest stories and topics.
The concept of all in one portal will also help to increase more visitors to Microsoft’s Internet properties. New users will add more web traffics and will be benefiting to Bing, the Doing Engine which is now the number two search engine in America.
According to Microsoft press release, MSN portal captured a large share of global visitors on monthly basis. Bing’s sister MSN now has about 520 million visitors per month. MSN portal also serves 48 markets and translates into 27 world’s languages.
Bing Rewards team is giving away several interesting prizes for the month of February. The biggest prize is a home entertainment system that includes an Xbox game console, Kinect motion controller, a 50-inc plasma TV with speakers system (this could be worth about $2,500). Members must redeem 40 credits for 1 entry for the system, or 80 credits for 10 entries.
Other interesting prizes for February’s sweepstakes include three $500 gift cards and a one-year Hulu Plus access. Members will have three chances to win a $500 gift card from REI, the outdoor activities store. Members must redeem 30 credits for 1 entry for the gift card, or 60 credits for 10 entries.
Bing Rewards team is also running a new type of sweepstakes starting today until March 11, and gives away 100,000 Bing Rewards credits. Members must follow the team’s Twitter account @BingRewards to get updates.
Starting the new year of 2012, the “Doing Engine” launched a series of ads featuring celebrity, pop music, and sport icons. The former decision engine team is now highlighting Bing as a “Doing Engine.” One of those ads featuring double-Grammy nominee Wiz Khalifa was showed during the 54th annual Grammy Awards.
This year’s event was the second most watched Grammy telecast that was aired on Sunday night, February 12, 2012. Citing Nielsen's preliminary ratings, billboard.com reported that Sunday's CBS broadcast was viewed by over 39 million people. The “Doing Engine” appears to grab a ton of eyeballs during this year’s event.
GreenLight, a Corbis’s division that handles media, licensing, copyrights for talent, released their findings of the world's biggest TV music event. According to GreenLight, marketers have increased the use of entertainment content during the 2012 telecast over 2011. In a press release one day after the event, David Reeder, vice president of GreenLight noted that "In an attempt to break out of the shadow of its corporate 'parent', Microsoft, Bing taps into the very hip style of Wiz Khalifa to demonstrate it is not your parents' search engine. More than just borrowing his music, Bing goes the slice of life route, letting Wiz tell us his story of growing from young upstart to established artist - much in the same way that Bing has quickly managed to grab meaningful market share after just a few short years in market."
(Video: Bing is for Doing, with Wiz Khalifa, click here to watch via YouTube)
Bing continued to slow-but-stable gaining search engine share in January 2012 in America. According to the latest web traffic data provided by comScore, the Doing Engine increased to 15.2% share of searches, compared to December 2011 which was at 15.1% (or an increase of 0.1% share).
Bing’s rival Google also went up in January and captured 66.2% share, compared to 65.9% share in December (or an increase of 0.3% share).
Bing’s partner Yahoo dropped to 14.1% share in January, compared to 14.5% share in December (or a drop of 0.4% share).
The Search Alliance combo totaled 29.3% share in January, compared to 29.6% share in December (or a drop of 0.3% share).
Bing’s parent is set to launch the "Consumer Preview" version of Windows 8 operating system on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, at Mobile World Congress. Tech watchers believe that Barcelona is suitable place for the announcement as Windows 8 OS is very close resemblance to Windows Phone 8 mobile OS.
Two years ago, Windows Phone 7 mobile OS was also announced at the same mobile conference by CEO Steve Ballmer. Last year at the same conference, Nokia made headline news as the Finland-based company announced a long-term partnership with Microsoft to utilize Windows Phone OS on all new smartphones.
The brand new Windows 8 operating system was introduced during the first day of June, 2011, at the D9 Conference which took place at an executive golf course resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California by Windows and Windows Live Engineering President Steven Sinofsky. Later in mid-September 2011, developers from around the world were able to check out the Windows 8 in Anaheim, California, during Build conference. Then, just few weeks before last year's Christmas, a bunch of developers met in San Francisco on December 6, 2011, as Microsoft people showed them Windows Store and urged them to develop Metro style apps (with 80% rev share).
The Consumer Preview “beta version” of Windows 8 will likely to include the popular Metro style applications. The new OS will be benefiting Bing’s users as they can develop Metro style apps and start selling them thru the new Windows Store, while users from around the world can download "paid" or "free" games and applications from the Store.
Just one week into the new year of 2012, Bing’s search alliance partner hired former PayPal president Scott Thompson as its new CEO. Then, three weeks ago Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang quitted his job from the board and severed his ties with the search engine pioneer. The Stanford University alumni later said that he wanted to pursue other business interests.
Today, Tuesday February 7, 2012, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and three old-timers of the company are quitting their jobs. Bostock announced the management shake-up in a letter to shareholders as he wrote ". . . Mr. Joshi, Mr. Kern, Mr. Wilson and I [Bostock] have volunteered not to stand for re-election at the next shareholders' meeting."
The latest management shake-up for the Silicon Valley-based company could jeopardize the future of Search Alliance as Bing and Yahoo had signed a 10-year global agreement in July 2009. The new team of leadership could also threaten its current negotiations with several big pockets investors who are interested to buy Yahoo Asian assets. Those assets include Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.com web auction site in China.
Bing’s partner Wolfram|Alpha will add more features on to the “knowledge engine” platform this Wednesday, February 8, 2012. The new option will be called “Wolfram|Alpha Pro.”
Citing Stephen Wolfram, the knowledge engine's founder, zdnet.com reported that the "Pro" option will include features such as:
Users can create interactive output using computable document format (CDF)
More support on graphics formats include 3D geometry
More personalized output of images by adding title, re-size zoom-in-out, and changing color
Bing has been keeping a low profile to avoid retaliation while Google+ launched a new feature which is known as “Search Plus Your World” (SPYW) in the second week of January 2012. Bing added social signals into its search results almost 1 ½ years ago by integrating data from Facebook and Twitter. The world’s largest search engine mines its own dataset to power Google+ search results with SPYW, while the big pockets Bing’s parent must pay Facebook and Twitter to get those social data. With a ton of money, everything is possible for Bing, as the “Doing Engine” is now the only search engine in the planet that has exclusive deals to access all type of social data from both Facebook and Twitter.
Early today, Liz Gannes of All Things D published an article as she interviewed Bing Director Stefan Weitz. Based on the interview, it appears that Bing team is working really hard to add stronger social signals into the “Doing Engine” soon.
While the progress has been slow as Weitz said in the article “…we are taking this pretty slow, and there’s a pretty good reason for that,” Bing team sees a significant impact into the division’s bottom line. Citing Stefan Weitz, in fact by incorporating social signal into search results has helped Bing the get more users to click on links including pay-per-click ads, as Gannes wrote “…the click-through rate goes up substantially.”
The BingWatch team will be attending the DomainFest Global Conference that is now taking place at the five-star Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in Santa Monica. Conference will be held from January 31 (Tue) to Feb 2, 2012 (Thu). The first day’s agenda include discussion about the new TLDs, social media networking trends, mobile advertising, and local advertising.
In its collaboration with Facebook, Bing has been pulling data from friends and family members to help its shoppers to make a better purchase decision since October 2010, while Google is trying to copycat Bing’s effort with a project called “Search Plus Your World” that was launched in early January 2012. As the “Doing Engine” has been working hard to add social layer into the search results by combining advices from friends, the latest findings from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project could prove that Bing is on the right track.
Under the management of the Pew Research Center, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project just published some findings on the important of a phone call to a friend when making purchasing decisions. According to the study, 38% of cellphone subscribers used their phone to call a friend while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store seeking their friend’s advices about a purchase decision. The report also shows about 24% to 25% of cellphone subscribers used their phone to check out reviews and comparing the price of a product online while they were in a brick-and-mortar store.
