Bing Makes Online Shopping a Social Experience

A new, social dimension is now available to users of Bing Shopping. The online shopping vertical for Microsoft’s decision/search engine has grown with the addition of Twitter and Facebook, catalyzing a new, richer experience for customers. Lawrence Lam, program manager Bing Shopping, and Sonam Saxena, product manager Bing Shopping, asked why online shopping should be a less social process than the traditional experience

And the fact of the matter is that it shouldn’t. Especially not with all the great social networking tools available for integration into search engines. In this regard, next time users “go shopping” via Bing, they’ll be able to ask their friends for an opinion, for advice, or simply brag with some new, sweet gear.

“75% of shoppers seek advice from others even when shopping online and now Bing shoppers can too! In the last announcement we refreshed the look of the reviews page so you can navigate the reviews from users and experts. Today we’ve unrolled a few more links to make it easy for you to ask for the input of your closest advisor- your social network,” Lam stated.

The latest step forward in the evolution of Bing Shopping comes at just a month after the Redmond company introduced new features to the search engine shopping vertical. In this regard, users will undoubtedly welcome Microsoft’s consistent approach to advancing Bing.

“You’ve had sharing for certain results like news and entertainment for a few months and now we bring you this sharing experience into Bing Shopping! With a single click you can ask for advice from your friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter for their take on a product you saw on Bing Shopping. You can even share it the old fashioned way – over email! We see our users using it not only to get feedback on price but on whether a particular product would look good on them, has a better model, etc.,” Lam revealed.