Bing Shopping Gets New Facebook Features as Traffic Surges for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

The shopping vertical of Microsoft’s search / decision engine has seen an explosion in usage as the 2010 holiday shopping season started after Thanksgiving last week.

Traffic exploded, Microsoft reveals, with over 40% more visitors turning to Bing Shopping on Cyber Monday 2010, compared with the same day a year ago.

“Bing Shopping experienced a record “Cyber Monday” with 40% more unique visitors than 2009. Monday also saw a 22% jump in visitors over November 26th (“Black Friday”) the historic start of the holiday shopping season.

“The top categories yesterday were “Clothing & Shoes”, “Computing”, “Electronics”, “Toys and Beauty” and “Fragrance”,” a member of the Bing team revealed.

With thanksgiving out of the way, Bing Shopping is now moving to the next step in its evolution.

In this regard, Bing’s shopping vertical is getting new social features via a Bing Feature Update.

Obviously, the new enhancements to Bing Shopping build on the close relationship between the decision engine and Facebook.

“Bing shopping has always let you compare prices, see product reviews and links to where you can purchase. But, wouldn’t it be great if you could tap your family and friends for advice? We agree. So starting today we are rolling out improvements to Bing shopping,” a member of the Bing team added.

While the Redmond company started rolling out the new social features to Bing Shopping on December 1st, 2010, it will take a few days before they will become available to users.

At the same time, the new features will be introduced only to customers in the US, Microsoft underlined.

“Introducing Bing shopping lists - with each product on Bing shopping, you will now have the option to "Add to List" with one click.

A shopping list module will appear on the bottom left of your screen, making it easy for you to keep track of the products that interest you and let you share with your friends and family via Facebook (authentication is via Facebook).

Now you can enlist the help of your favorite gadget geek. Give your friends and family a nudge by publishing a wish-list to your Facebook Wall,” Microsoft said.