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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.
(Image: DomainFest.com)
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.
(Chart: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project)
Bing Rewards team offers several prizes for the “Doing Engine” users with a brand new sweepstakes. Users must redeem credits for entry by January 31, 2012.
A list of prizes include a two-night trip for two persons plus free airfare to Orlando, a Kinect for Xbox 360 bundle, and 30 gift cards of $50 from Tango. Only users who live in America legally and 13-year old can submit entry to the sweepstakes.
To enter the draw, users can redeem their Bing Rewards credits to get a single chance or multiple chances. Here are some examples on the unit count for each entry:
(Image: Bing Rewards)
An article published by guardian.co.uk early this morning which later cited by many tech bloggers showed that major Britain’s entertainment industry groups and copyrights holders are condemning Bing and Google for providing easy access to illegal content via their search results.
In contrast, the entertainment groups believe that search engines make it so hard for users to search for legal music and movies online.
In the article guardian.co.uk noted that copyrights holders are urging the Britain government to supervising or censoring Bing and Google search results. They also asked top search engine companies to provide search results that follow the Code of Practice such as stop indexing websites that offer illegal contents. The Guardian added “… [copyright group] urges the government to introduce a voluntary body that would remove rogue websites from internet search results.”
(Movie poster: “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” by Disney)
Bing Maps team announced several new features for the popular mapping section early this morning. According to the team blog post, those new features include:
(Image: Bing team)
With the 10-year global deal that was signed by former Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in July 2009, Bing continued to send a reimbursement check to Yahoo! on a quarterly basis. After the Wall Street closed on Tuesday January 24, 2012, Yahoo! announced their Q4-2011 financial results.
On the earnings report, Yahoo stated that they received a $48 million check from Bing team. The money was for taking care of the search transition from Yahoo! Search to Bing platform during the latest quarter. However, Yahoo also noticed that payments from Bing will soon stop as all Yahoo! Search is now fully powered by the “Doing Engine.”
Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West 2012 will take place at San Jose McEnery Convention Center from February 28 to March 1, 2012. This year’s February will have 29 days. The event will run from Tuesday to Thursday. The popular Silicon Valley’s convention center is located at 150 West San Carlos St., San Jose, CA 95110.
With a new tag line as the “Doing Engine” that was launched last weekend, Bing is also the Gold Sponsor for this year event. The SMX organizer will have over 130 domestic and International experts and speakers in the field of search marketing. At the same time, the Doing Engine will bring a team of speakers including its famous senior product manager, Duane Forrester. In order to get more fans, Bing team offers a 10% discount code and they must inserting “SMX10Bing” during the registration. Based on the early bird rate (until January 28), an all access pass will cost about $1,445.
(Logo: SMX West 2012)
Bing marketing team is working hard to tweak its slogan for the number two search engine in America. According to Bing team blog, the team will debut a new ad featuring American snowboarder Kevin Pearce this Sunday (January 22) during the NFC Championship game between NY Giants versus SF 49ers. Then, the new ad will be shown on ESPN’s X Games coverage.
On the new campaign, Bing will show a new slogan "Bing is for Doing." Since Bing’s launch in early June 2009, users referred to Bing as a "decision engine.” We hope the new slogan will not confused with famous Nike's "Just Do It" tag line.
(Image: Bing is for Doing)
After the Wall Street stock market closed on Thursday, January 19, 2012, Bing’s parent announced quarterly revenue of $20.89 billion for Fiscal Year 2012 Quarter 2 that ended December 31, 2011. Compared to the prior year period, FY11-Q2 revenue was $19.95 billion, this was an increase of 5% from one year ago.
Some highlights from Microsoft’s earnings report:
Bing’s Online Services Division reported revenue of $784 million or an increase of 10% from one year ago. Bing’s parent praised the decision engine's organic market share in America which grew to 15.1%. On the earnings report, Bing’s parent also noted that the Search Alliance with Yahoo had captured about 27% share of search market in America.
(Slide: Microsoft’s earnings report FY12-Q2)
On Wednesday, June 6, 2012, the decision engine will join its partners Yahoo and Facebook and its rival Google to permanently enable Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). From that day on, some websites will be using double stacked support which allowing access on both IPv4 and IPv6. On the same day, as per Internet Society who organized the switch, several top Internet service providers (ISPs) from around the world will also join Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and Google to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services.
Bing joined the test flight day of IPv6 on June 8, 2011. The last year’s test was cheered by many companies and was regarded very successful experiment.
IPv6 was tested for the first time last year to boost Internet grow as networks run out of IPv4 numbers. IPv6 will solve Internet issues for a long run. As all websites will permanently enable IPv6, Internet will continue to be attached into more devices for communication purposes. With more numbers available via IPv6, this will ensure users stay connected online worldwide.
(Logo: worldipv6launch.org)
Bing’s search partner Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, former CEO (from June 2007 to January 2009) and board member resigned from the company’s board of directors and from all executive positions starting on Tuesday January 17, 2012, as per press release by Yahoo.
As one of the top Asian executives during the early day of Internet business, Yang co-founded Yahoo! with David Filo in 1995 while both were students at Palo Alto-based Stanford University. After 17 years with the search engine pioneer company, Yang is severing all ties with the Silicon Valley-based company. Yahoo went public in 1996.
Bing’s Search Alliance recently appointed former PayPal’s President Scott Thompson as the new Chief Executive Officer. Just few weeks before 2011 Christmas, several shareholders have asked Yang to resign due to conflict of interest of Yang being member of Yahoo's board of directors. At the same time, tech watchers rumored that Yang was trying to become the connector with other investors who were interested to take the company private.
Interbrand just published their annual report on the world’s most valuable business assets. The report called Best Global Brands 2011 provided a table ranking 100 global brands. Soft-drink and soda makers Coca-Cola retained its title as the world’s number one most valuable brand with an estimated total value of $71.8 billion.
Bing’s parent was ranked as the third most valuable brand of the world in 2011, with an estimated total value of $59.1 billion, making it bigger than Google and Apple companies. Although in general Microsoft’s brand value dropped about 3% from one year ago.
Google was ranked as the fourth most valuable brand, with an estimated total value of $55.3 billion. The difference between Microsoft and Google was only $4 billion in term of brand value. In contrast with Microsoft, Google’s brand value increased about 27% from one year ago.
(Table of top 100 global brands in 2011 published by Interbrand.com)
Bing’s parent and its partner Nokia announced a new type of smartphone running on Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 operating system early this week at Las Vegas CES conference. The new phone will be called Lumia 900 and of course the new phone features will be defaulted with Bing as the decision engine.
Several tech bloggers including pocketnow.com reported that the new phone is coming to AT&T in March 2012. Tech bloggers cited a Nokia Developer Newsletter which was published on January 12, 2012, and stated “The Nokia Lumia 900 phone runs Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5. It is the biggest and fastest smartphone yet. And it will become available exclusively through AT&T in March.”
Later, citing information from a webcasting hosted by Paul Thurrott of twit.tv, blog site engadget.com noted the exact date of Lumia 900 release date will be on March 18, 2012.
(Image: Nokia Lumia 900)
Celebrities and festival-goers from the independent film community will get a lot of helps from Bing next week. Bing is the official decision engine for this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The festival will start on January 19, 2012.
As the official decision engine, Bing team wll also be setting up Bing Bar to provide concierge services and organize parties for festival-goers, including free transportation service and free movie passes.
The technology team will provide local mapping services and Sundance's schedule of events that running on mobile apps. The Sundance app is catered mostly for Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch). The tech team is still working hard to get an app for running on Google Android devices. Unfortunately for Bing’s own mobile operating system Windows Phone, users must have to wait until next year’s event.
(Image: Bing)
Bing captured the number two spot with 15.1% share of searches in America in December 2011, compared to November which was at 15.0% share (an increase of 0.1% share), as per data provided by comScore.
Google maintained the number one spot with 65.9% share in December, compared to 65.4% share in November 2011 (an increase of 0.4% share).
Yahoo queries dropped to 14.5% share in December, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 (a drop of 0.6% share).
The Search Alliance combo Bing and Yahoo had a total of 29.6% share in December, compared to 30.1% share in November (or a drop of 0.5% share).
In October 2010 Bing added social layer into the decision engine search results by pulling data from Facebook friends and family members who share the same networks. Bing’s search results showed friends have liked on certain things and stuff. 15 months after the decision engine’s announcement, Google’s results get more social and personal with “Search Plus Your World.” The world’s largest search engine is working hard to transform its search results by mixing data shared privately along with data from the public websites.
In order to experience the new feature, users must sign-in to Google.com and conducting search in English language. The new system allows users to catch contents that are privately shared from friends and family combining with contents from other public websites.
According to Google blog post, there are three new features including:
Some limitations of the new features include no direct data pulling from Facebook or Twitter. Facebook has its exclusive partnership with Bing, while Twitter’s deal with Google has expired few months ago.
(Top: Bing Social Layer; bottom: Google Search Plus Your World)
Bing Deals has signed a new partnership with 8coupons, a New York-based daily deal aggregator company to provide local offers to the decision engine users via the web and mobile app. There was no official press release, but citing Microsoft and 8coupons people, Tricia Duryee of allthingsd.com confirmed the partnership last weekend.
Bing Deals organizes local offers by city and updates local deals regularly to help the decision engine users to find the best offers. Bing Deals previously used The Dealmap services as the decision engine team announced the partnership on March 3, 2011. However, Bing’s major rival Google acquired the aggregator during the first week of August 2011.
Top image: 8coupons.com
The decision engine team will send out tweets with questions about movies from its Twitter account on Friday, January 6, 2012. Bing’s users must respond between 9 AM to 5 PM PT. The contest is also called as “Trip to Sundance” Sweepstakes. To be eligible, users must include the #BingBar hashtag on their respond, live in America, 21 years or older, and become Bing’s follower up to January 19, 2012.
One lucky Bing’s user and a friend will win a free trip to experience the independent films festival known as the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
(Image: @Bing Twitter)
One day after Bing’s partner Yahoo hired a new CEO, who was former PayPal president Scott Thompson, Wall Street analysts speculated on Thursday morning that the search engine pioneer is now considering merge with Netflix. The streaming media stock market value has been dropping like crazy since this past summer due to decreasing number of subscribers and flip-flop on DVD rental pricing. However, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has upbeat news and noted his company’s service has reached over 45 countries worldwide and delivered over two billion hours of content of TV shows and online movies.
November and December 2011 total spending reached an all-time high record at $37.2 billion, compared to the 2010’s total spending which was at $32.4 billion, this was an increase of 15% versus 2010, reported comScore.com.
Online shopping analysts believe that many stores offered free shipping and free tax. Those two incentives helped the recent ecommerce booming in America.
The 2011 Cyber Monday (November 28) reached a total of $1.25 billion, making it the top spending day in ecommerce history. Compared to one year ago, the 2010 Cyber Monday totaled $1.03 billion, or an increase of 22%.
(Table: comScore)
