In order to become faster, simpler, social and more distinguished from the other social media, Bing has used a new look on Thursday the tenth of May.
On Thursday, Bing said it will roll out a new design over the next few weeks that trades in its existing search results page format—a mix of images and various types of text-based results on a one-column page—for a layout in three separate panes featuring traditional text results, results from specific information sources and services, and results related to your social-network friends.
Evolution is especially important if Bing wants to gain market share. The search engine is a very distant second to Google, pulling in 15.3 percent of U.S. search queries in March compared to Google’s 66.4 percent, according to comScore.
Microsoft clearly believes these changes must include increased organization of social content, which has exploded with the popularity of Twitter and Facebook over the past several years. Within Bing’s results, a new “Sidebar” column will organize relevant content from your friends on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, Bing will suggest friends who might be knowledgeable about a specific topic by considering their listed “likes” on Facebook. A feed will also let you see and respond to your friends’ Facebook updates and questions. And users will be able to ask their Facebook friends questions via Bing.