Bing Ramps up The "Friend Effect"

If you have ever performed a search on a search engine and wondered what your Facebook friends would think of the answers, well help is now at hand.

Microsoft's Google-chasing Bing search engine started introducing some features from Facebook last year, but has this week rolled out a far more in-depth integration of search results with data from the social networking site.  

The aim - to use the "Friend Effect" to access the "Collective IQ".

What does that actually mean?  Well, when a user (who has to be signed into Bing and Facebook) does a search now, they will see which sites and pages with sites in the results that their friends have liked.  They will also see likes from the entire Facebook community if relevant.

Searchers will see up to three pictures of friends who have liked the site or an individual page.  Searching on a place with produce a list of your friends who live there and for those on a shopping spree, users can select products and post them directly to their wall to ask friends their opinion.  

Interestingly, the toolbar now has the Facebook "Like" functionality built in, so users can Like any page not just those who have added the Like button.  

The integration was inevitable, given the initial relationship and the need for Bing to find a real USP to separate it from Google, especially after the latter's rollout of +1.  The challenge will be convincing enough users, firstly, to register and remain logged in to both services, and that they have a friends network meaty enough to make it worthwhile.