Summary: Microsoft is about to announce a deal with Facebook that would give the Bing search engine access to real-time status updates from Facebook users.
In a display of great reporting, All Thing’s D editor Kara Swisher has uncovered some early details on a Microsoft / Facebook collaboration that would bring real time status updates from both sites into Bing search results.
According to the report on All Thing’s D:
- Microsoft will soon announce non-exclusive deals with Facebook to gain access to user status updates for the purposes of including them in search results on Bing
- Facebook has an estimated 40 million status updates per day
- Facebook will be extending an option to its users under the privacy controls tab on the site to exclude their updates from search
From a marketing perspective its a little unclear how this will affect businesses online. Some questions which still remain to be answered:
- While growing more popular, Bing is still lagging far behind Google in market share for search. When does Google get involved?
- How heavily will Microsoft weigh status updates in results – will these results show up in the middle of a search engine result page or be separated somehow much in the same way sponsored ads are?
- How will Facebook deal with spamming of status updates plugging a particular product or service?
- Will companies start providing incentives for status updates on Facebook much in the same way they have on Twitter for posting hashtags?
- Will Facebook users be up in arms over this potential invasion of privacy?
What do you think about the todays breaking news regarding Facebook and Microsoft?
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