by Benjamin Maltbie on May 14, 2012
Can the number 2 search engine in the world plan to climb to the number one spot?
Integrating social media seems to be key.
Bing.com has been reinvented, now offering enhanced search results that harness the power of social media sites to populate a “social column” on the right side of the screen. To do this, profiles from Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Quora will be pulled from the normal search results. Users will even be able to ask questions on their favorite social network without leaving the comfort of Bing.
“What Your Friends May Know,” —the name for social column— currently only integrates Facebook. When a query is entered, Bing populates this list with your friends and other topic experts. In order to find people to assist you in your queries, simply sign into Facebook and install the Bing App.
And how does Bing build these lists? Microsoft execs explain that they are leveraging as much publicly available data as they can from Social Media sites. If someone has posted a status, tweet, picture or liked a link on the topic, then they have a stronger likelihood of appearing in your search.
Microsoft admits that a large reason for this update was to clean clutter from the main search. How do you feel about the integration of social sites into Bing?
By Benjamin Maltbie
by Aldrin Calimlim for AppAdvice
Gradually entering a level on a par with BlackBerry Messenger and Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messengerhas just been updated with some neat additional features.
Facebook’s dedicated messaging app for iPhone, which is independent of the official Facebook app, has gained the ability to display read receipts. In one-on-one messages, the app displays “Seen” followed by the time when the message was read. In group chats, it displays the same plus the names of the ones in the group who have read it.
But unlike iMessage, which offers read receipts as an opt-in feature, Facebook Messenger provides no way to opt out of them in case you don’t want others knowing exactly when you you’ve read their messages. In line with this, the app has also replaced its three-dot real-time typing symbol in group conversations with as simple as the name of the person currently typing a reply. The updated app now also attaches location data to each message, provided that the sender has granted permission for the app to do so. Here’s a screen shot:
Notably absent in the update is the long overdue support for video chat. Upon its launch in August last year, a “hidden” video component was discovered in the app. That component remains untapped. Rest assured that video chat is underway, along with an iPad version of Facebook Messenger.
The free Facebook Messenger is available in the App Store. Now that it’s enhanced with more features, do you see any clear advantages of using Facebook Messenger over working with messages in the all-inclusive Facebook app?
This article originally published at AppAdvice here.
by Scott on March 8, 2012
![Pinterest Drives More Traffic to Blogs Than Twitter [STUDY] (Mashable)](http://socialkarmamedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/pinterest-lionsgate-600-300x187.jpg "Pinterest Drives More Traffic to Blogs Than Twitter [STUDY] (Mashable)")
Pinterest drove more traffic to online publishers in February than Twitter, according to third-party measurement data.
That’s an impressive figure, given that the two-year-old site has an estimated 11.7 million active registered users compared to Twitter’s more than 100 million.
The data was provided by Shareholic, whose sharing widgets are used across more than 200,000 online publishers, mostly independent bloggers. Between them, those publishers reach some 270 million unique visitors every month.
In February, the company found that a little less than half (48.81%) of all traffic came from Google, followed by Facebook (6.38%), Yahoo (1.61%), StumbleUpon (1.29%) and Bing (1.21%). Pinterest came in sixth at 1.05%, beating out Twitter at 0.82%.
In January, Shareholic found that Pinterest sent more referral traffic to publishers than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, falling into line just behind Twitter. Women’s lifestyle, home decor and cooking magazineshave been among the biggest beneficiaries of Pinterest’s growth. Some are seeing bigger referral numbers from the image-collecting service than from major portals like Facebook and Yahoo.
Content from magazine websites and blogs — particularly those that focus on home decor, arts and crafts, style and food — are among the most frequently “pinned” subjects on Pinterest. Thus it’s no surprise that those two parties are among the first to report significant traffic growth from the site.
by Lauren Indvik
by Scott on February 29, 2012
![22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue [Infographic]](http://socialkarmamedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/infographic1thumb-b-290x183.jpg "22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue [Infographic]")
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