Bing has strengthened its partnership with Facebook, launching a new tool that lets users search and browse through their friends’ photos.
The ‘Friends’ Photo’ feature isn’t available directly from the Bing homepage. Instead, users need to go to www.bing.com/friendsphotos to use the tool.
The feature only works if the user is signed into Facebook and has granted Bing’s permission to connect.
Whereas Facebook search simply lists photos in a single, reverse-chronological column, Bing lays the photos out in a tiled view.
Each thumbnail image shows the number of likes and comments, and the image expands when clicked, showing comments in a sidebar.
Users can add their own comment, like a photo or share it on your wall directly from Bing. There’s also an option to open photos in Facebook, which is useful for tagging a photo or adding a location.
Microsoft says it will never share Facebook photos with the public. Bing also respects the same privacy settings as Facebook, so photos will only be viewable in Bing to users who have that permission on Facebook.
In May, Bing added a Social Search sidebar, which shows social network activity from friends and high-profile “experts” for any search keyword.
It also allows users to ask questions of their friends and link to relevant search topics. Compared to Google’s approach with Search Plus Your World, Microsoft is drawing a clearer boundary between regular and social search results.
Read the official blog here
