Microsoft Makes Bing Social, Announces Office 2010 SP1 and Exchange 2010 SP2
Bing, the search engine presented by Microsoft as its “decision engine” (because it helps you make decisions, not just search for stuff), has gotten more social. Microsoft announced that Bing users who sign into Facebook will get personalized search results based on the opinions of their Facebook friends. Content, stories, and sites that the user’s Facebook friends liked, now show up on the Bing results page.
“The best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and emotions of your friends,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president, Bing. “Search is now more than a fact finder — we’re marrying fact-based search results with your friends’ street smarts to combine the best data on the Web with the opinions of the people you trust the most and the collective IQ of the Web.”
Remember that part about Bing being a decision engine? Well, according to a survey conducted by Bing and Impulse Research, 90% of the people who took part in the survey said that in their decision making process they took into consideration advice from friends and family. That’s what Bing is doing by integrating with Facebook – it is offering personalized results to help you make a decision. When the user is searching for something, he is not searching alone; he is bringing all his friends along.
Moving on, Microsoft announced at the Tech-Ed 2011 conference that the first service pack for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 will be released by the end of June. Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will be the first major update for the productivity suite and will come with “many interesting changes” as The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team put it.
Also at Tech-Ed 2011, Microsoft announced that it will roll out a second service pack for Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) will be released in the second half of 2011. It will come with some 500 bug fixes and several new features .
“The best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and emotions of your friends,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president, Bing. “Search is now more than a fact finder — we’re marrying fact-based search results with your friends’ street smarts to combine the best data on the Web with the opinions of the people you trust the most and the collective IQ of the Web.”
Remember that part about Bing being a decision engine? Well, according to a survey conducted by Bing and Impulse Research, 90% of the people who took part in the survey said that in their decision making process they took into consideration advice from friends and family. That’s what Bing is doing by integrating with Facebook – it is offering personalized results to help you make a decision. When the user is searching for something, he is not searching alone; he is bringing all his friends along.
Moving on, Microsoft announced at the Tech-Ed 2011 conference that the first service pack for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 will be released by the end of June. Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will be the first major update for the productivity suite and will come with “many interesting changes” as The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team put it.
Also at Tech-Ed 2011, Microsoft announced that it will roll out a second service pack for Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) will be released in the second half of 2011. It will come with some 500 bug fixes and several new features .
