Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Google Plus One & Other News

The past week has been a busy week on the news front, what with the resignation of Apple CEO Steve Jobs for example. Here's a quick rundown of some of the topics that has hit the news recently...


Apple CEO Steve Jobs Resigns

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigned last Wednesday as chief executive of the technology giant and will be replaced by chief operating officer Tim Cook. Mr Jobs, who underwent a liver transplant following pancreatic cancer, said he could no longer meet his chief executive's duties and expectations.

The 56-year-old has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since January. In a short letter to the board of Apple, Mr Jobs wrote: "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's chief executive, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as chief executive of Apple."

He continued "I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role."

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in the 1970s with Steve Wozniak, and thanks to innovative and hugely popular products such as the iPod, the iPhone and more recently the iPad, Apple has become one of the most sought after brands in the world. His extraordinary vision and leadership has guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company.

Although no longer CEO, Steve Jobs will still play a vital role in Apple's future with Tim Cook at the helm.

Do you think Apple will be as successful without the former CEO? I would love to read your thoughts on this.


Google +1 Button New Features

Internet search giant Google have added two new features to the +1 button, including the ability to directly share a webpage to Google+.

In a recent post on the Official Google Blog, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra announced: "Beginning today, we're making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. Just +1 a page as usual and look for the new 'Share on Google+' option. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share."

The second new feature added to the button is the +snippets. The +snippets feature will automatically include a link, an image and a description of the webpage you've shared using the +1 button. These +snippets are a great way to jumpstart conversations with people in your circles.

To encourage more sharing of content on the Google+ social network, Google have made is easy for publishers to customise their +snippets. More details on this can be found on the Google Webmaster blog.

Since it's launch in June, the +1 button has gathered momentum and is now installed on more than 1 million websites with over 4 billion daily views, according to Google. These numbers are very impressive and only time will tell how successful the +1 button will become.

Note: If you're on Google+, you can add me to your circles by visiting my profile at: https://plus.google.com/104849975941505117776

Do you like these new features? Please let me know.


Bing Webmaster Tools Now Includes Yahoo! Data

The Bing Webmaster team have recently announced on the Webmaster Central blog the integration of Yahoo! traffic data into Bing Webmaster Tools reports. Bing Webmaster Tools will now be showing integrated data from Yahoo! within certain areas and reports.

The areas you will notice the changes are on the Traffic Tab. The "Traffic Summary" and "Page Traffic" reports will be impacted with Impressions, Clicks and Click Through Rates (CTR) increasing based on combined data numbers across both search engines.

As a visual reminder that data is now combined, you will see both the Bing and Yahoo! logos directly above the graphs shown on these pages. At this time, the data will be combined and not selectable with September being the first full month of combined data. The data will also update in any market where Bing is powering Yahoo! search.


Facebook New Sharing Improvements

Facebook announced last week a bunch of new improvements that makes it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want.

According to Facebook, the main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, right next to the posts, photos and tags they affect. There are several other updates that will make it easier to understand who can see your content (or your friends') in any context.

Here's a quick rundown of the improvements (courtesy of AllFacebook.com):

• The privacy settings are moving toward individual post windows and profiles.
• Users are gaining the ability to approve tags of themselves in others' posts and photos.
• All tags will include an attribution of the person who did the tagging.
• Places no longer require physical check-ins, so people can add locations to posts, even from the desktop.
• You don't need to be friends with someone to tag them in a post or photo.
• You don't have to like a brand to tag it in a post or photo.
• Facebook has changed the word "everyone" to "public" in privacy settings, for clarity.
• You can customize privacy, or visibility of information, on a post-by-post basis.
• Users can edit the visibility of individual bits of content anytime after they post.
• The changes don't affect mobile users, at least not for now.

These changes, according to Facebook, have already started to be rolled out across their system. Once your account has been updated, you'll see a prompt for a tour that walks you through these new features from your homepage. You can read more about these changes from the links that are available on the Facebook blog.

Do you like these new improvements? Do you think Facebook is copying Google+ by changing the word "everyone" to "public" in the privacy settings. I would love to read your thoughts on this.


Google Translate For Google+

Ever wanted to read posts and comments written in another language on Google+? Well now you can.

As of writing this post, Google have just released a Chrome Extension, Google Translate for Google+ that translates posts and comments into more than 50 languages.

In an update on Google+, Josh Estelle (Leading frontend and mobile development for Google Translate) writes "We've heard from a lot of Google+ users wanting an easier way to understand posts written in other languages. I'm an engineer on Google Translate and thought we could do something about that. That's why I'm happy to announce our Chrome extension, Google Translate for Google+, that using the power of Google Translate, can automatically translate any post or comment into more than 50 languages.

Once you've installed the extension, refresh Google+ and you'll see Translate links next to posts and comments. Click the links to instantly see translations."

Although still in the experimental stage, this is a very helpful extension and one that I'll be using quite regularly. You can get the extension by visiting:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jfppgkomfopklagggkjiaddgndkgopgl


HootSuite Adds Friendly Facebook Features

HootSuite (the popular social media management system) has today added new Facebook features to it's dashboard. The social media dashboard is now equipped with even fuller Facebook functionality which means you can do even more in the dashboard than ever before.

Now you can manage your Facebook Groups and Events, along with your Profiles and Pages from within HootSuite streams. You can also attach and upload photos directly to Facebook, search all public updates for brand mentions and even geo-locate your campaigns.

All these new features are now readily available the next time you login to HootSuite.


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Until my next post, have a wonderful week!

Implications Of Microsoft's Acquisition Of Skype

As you've most probably heard, Microsoft is buying Skype for an astonishing $8.5 billion...it's biggest acquisition so far.

Given this news, here's an interesting article from Chris Crum, editor of WebProNews explaining the major implications and concerns that come with Microsoft's recent acquisition of Skype...


Can Skype Help Microsoft Beat Google?
Major Implications Come with Microsoft's Biggest Acquisition to Date.

You've probably heard by now that Microsoft is buying Skype (pending regulatory approval). This is Microsoft's biggest acquisition to date at $8.5 billion, and Skype's second acquisition (it's already been bought and sold by eBay). Since Skype's release from eBay, it has been quite busy adding features and functionalities, and even making some acquisitions of its own, such as that of live streaming video service Qik.

Skype has a reported 663 million registered users and 145 million average connected users. The company recently announced a record of 30 million users online at the same time.

The deal has enormous implications, not only for Microsoft's own offerings, but for the industry at large. There are also plenty of concerns. Let's get to those first.


Concerns

Clearly, Skype has a big user base, and users have the right to be worried about what is going to become of their beloved service in the hands of a giant like Microsoft. Especially considering Microsoft's track record of acquisitions (laid out its graphic nature here).

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb brings up some reasonable fears, such as product neglect and malware issues. "Will Skype in 14 years look like Hotmail does today?" he asks. "Malware is already an issue for Skype and of course it's a well known part of the Microsoft landscape," he also notes.

How will it affect use across various platforms? Microsoft says it will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms. Still, this is a little vague, and considering how much head butting goes on between Microsoft and Google, it wouldn't be an enormous shock to see some issues raised in this area in the future.

On reassuring the continued support of other platforms, Steve Ballmer said at the press conference, "I said it and I mean it. We will continue to support non-Microsoft platforms."

"We're one of the companies that has a track record of doing this," he added. Still, does that mean all platforms?

The fact that this is such a huge acquisition for Microsoft, however, should be an indication that the company will take it very seriously, as it has so much invested in Skype's future success.


Mobile

Skype, which has more users than Twitter, should help Microsoft on numerous strategic levels. Mobile would be a major one. Skype will support Windows Phone, of course, and while it remains to be seen what kinds of integrations we can expect, there's little doubt that it will be an integral part of the Microsoft mobile strategy as it tries to gain ground against Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

Also consider that Microsoft has recently made deals with Nokia and RIM that will see Microsoft services heavily integrated on these companies' mobile devices. It stands to reason that Skype will play a major role here as well.

It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that Microsoft would at some point create a Skype-branded phone.


The Living Room

The living room is one area where Microsoft already has a tremendous edge over competitors like Google and Apple. While the jury's still out on the future success of Google TV and Apple TV, it's been pretty well established that Microsoft's Xbox line is a smashing success. Kinect is doing pretty well too. Guess what will be integrated with both of these.

In its announcement, Microsoft points out its "long-standing focus and investment in real-time communications across its various platforms" including Xbox Live. It also says Skype will support Xbox and Kinect, and will connect Skype users with Xbox Live (in addition to Lync, Outlook and other communities).

PayPal is also coming to Xbox Live. That can't hurt either.


The Enterprise

Let's not forget about the implications for businesses. Microsoft says the acquisition will increase accessibility of real-time video and voice communications for enterprise users and generate "new business and revenue opportunities".

Plenty of businesses are already using Skype. How many are using Microsoft products? This could be a huge blow to Google, who is aggressively going after the enterprise market with Google Apps, and soon with Chrome OS. Skype may give businesses another reason to stick with MS. Of course it remains to be seen what kinds of integrations we'll see.


Competition and Google

There are plenty of areas where Microsoft and Google compete with one another, and Skype could go a long way in helping Microsoft with maybe all of them. That includes the areas we've already discussed - mobile, the living room, and the enterprise. It also includes the communication services Skype provides on its own.

Google has been doing more and more in this area, whether it be in the form of Google Voice or video chat via Google Talk and Gmail (email being another prime example of where Google and Microsoft already compete). How about live streaming video? Skype recently bought Qik for this, and YouTube recently announced its own YouTube Live (both a viewing destination and a platform for streaming live video).

YouTube is also doing plenty of other things to cement its position of being THE online video destination. This week, the company announced new partnerships with movie studios, the doubling of its catalog of movie offerings (including new releases), and increased investments in original content from partners. This comes back to the living room discussion, but I'm guessing we will continue to see overlap in the offerings from these two companies here.


Bing

And then there's Bing. What in the world could Skype possibly have to do with search? Well, everything we've talked about up until now is all about Microsoft expanding its presence and user base. The more people using Microsoft products (now including Skype), the more opportunities Microsoft has to push Bing on people. The more businesses using Microsoft products, the more opportunities for Bing integration. The more consumers using Microsoft in the living room (where Microsoft is already heavily pushing Bing via television commercials), the more opportunities for Microsoft to push Bing on users through products.

We've had the mobile conversation more than once - both when Microsoft announced its partnership with Nokia, and its partnership with RIM. They both equate to Bing search being the default search on more mobile devices, and getting Bing into more consumers' hands (literally). These things can only help Bing's continued growth.

Last week, we asked, "Will Bing catch Google?". The Skype acquisition can't hurt. Much of this is simply about opportunity. We don't know all of the details about Microsoft's plans for Skype, but there's no question that there is an incredible amount of possibilities that can help give the company some much-needed boosts.

Kirkpatrick brings up another good point about developer opportunities, making the case that "social graph and address books, presence, file sharing, Instant Messaging, (and) mobile" elements of Skype are all things developers salivate over, and that with Microsoft behind it, developers could get a great deal more access to build more useful applications and integrations on top of Skype.

The social element was played up in the press conference about the acquisition.


The Facebook Factor

As long as we're talking about how much of a strategic buy this could turn out to be for Microsoft, in its ongoing competition with Google, let's not leave out the implications for Facebook - another company that not only has a partnership with Microsoft, but increasingly competes with Google in numerous areas.

Om Malik brings up some good points about how the acquisition relates to Google's competition with Facebook, which he says could be the biggest winner of the deal.

"The Palo Alto-based social networking giant had little or no chance of buying Skype. Had it been public, it would have been a different story. With Microsoft, it gets the best of both worlds - it gets access to Skype assets (Microsoft is an investor in Facebook) and it gets to keep Skype away from Google," he says. "Facebook needs Skype badly. Among other things, it needs to use Skype's peer-to-peer network to offer video and voice services to the users of Facebook Chat. If the company had to use conventional methods and offer voice and video service to its 600 million plus customers, the cost and overhead of operating the infrastructure would be prohibitive."

"Facebook can also help Skype get more customers for its SkypeOut service, and it can have folks use Facebook Credits to pay for Skype minutes," he adds. "Skype and Facebook are working on a joint announcement and you can expect it shortly."

Also, while Google continues to struggle in social, Skype makes Microsoft more social by default, with or without Facebook (MUCH more so with any Facebook integration).

The New York Times says Microsoft analysts see the acquisition as a move to block Google from "gaining greater ground in Internet communications". Google was said to have been in talks with Skype about a potential partnership. It may or may not be the entire basis for the acquisition, but it's not hard to see this logic.

To put it simply, it's all about products that people use, and Microsoft just added another major one to its list.

Google is just kicking off its Google I/O developer event. It will be interesting to see what all news comes out of this, and how it might pertain to this discussion.

Do you think the acquisition will be good for Microsoft and for Skype? Let me know what you think.


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Bing Searches More Accurate Than Google's, Study Finds

Microsoft's search engine Bing, and even Yahoo, are providing users with more accurate searches than their rival Google, according to a report out this week.

Bing and Yahoo, which is now using Microsoft's Bing search technology, had the highest search success rates last month, reported Experian Hitwise, an Internet monitoring firm. More than 81% of searches on their sites led users to visit a Web site.

However, Google, the dominant player in the search market, wasn't as successful with its January searches. According to Experian Hitwise, Google had a 65% success rate.

"In my business and personal searching, I feel like I'm seeing less on-point results and more garbage, even on pretty specific queries," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Search success is a big deal for both advertisers and users. This same study also pointed out a significant increase in multi-word, more complex searches. To me, this means that users are looking for more specific results."

Olds said the search engine that delivers the most accurate results will win over users in the long run. That's good news for Microsoft, which has been chasing Google from a long distance ever since Bing was released. Even if Google's results haven't been as accurate, it's still the highly dominant search engine in the market.

Experian Hitwise also reported that Google accounted for 67.95% of all U.S. searches in January. Bing-powered searches, which encompasses Bing and Yahoo, accounted for 27.44%. Yahoo alone came in at 14.62%, while Bing had 12.81%.

"If the inaccurate searches are a trend and not an isolated result, then this does point to the need for Google to improve on its search success," Olds said. "In the short term, it gives Microsoft a great angle they can use to tout Bing vs. Google to advertisers."


Many thanks to Sharon Gaudin of Computerworld for the content of this article. If you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

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Bing Accuses Google Of Click Fraud

Without a doubt, the biggest storyline in search this week has been Google accusing Bing of cheating and stealing its results, Bing semi-denying this, and the back and forth that's gone on between the two dominant search engines.

The whole thing came to light when Danny Sullivan posted an article detailing Google's "sting operation," which Bing would later call "spy novelesque" and even "click fraud". Essentially, Google rigged up some forced search results to test Bing, and found that Bing was indeed displaying the results in question.

Just hours after Sullivan's article came out, Google's Matt Cutts and Bing's Harry Shum took to the stage at the Farsight search event to publicly argue about what Bing had done and the ethics of it. Bing also put up an official blog post showcasing its position on the matter. "We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users," wrote Shum. "To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today's story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn't accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

"The history of the web and the improvement of a broad array of consumer and business experiences is actually the story of collective intelligence, from sharing HTML documents to hypertext links to click data and beyond. Many companies across the Internet use this collective intelligence to make their products better every day," Shum continued. "We all learn from our collective customers, and we all should...We never set out to build another version of an existing search engine."

It didn't take long for Google to offer up its own official blog post, rehashing the tactics described in Sullivan's article, with added commentary from Google Fellow Amit Singhal, who said, "As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of: Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature, the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program, or possibly some other means to send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click. Those results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing. Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results-a cheap imitation."

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality," he added. "We've invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that's not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there-algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop."

Google did not get the last word in the war with Bing (at least not yet...I'm sure we haven't seen the last word at this point). Bing took to its blog again, this time with some words from VP of the company's online services division, Yusuf Mehdi. "We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting," he said. "We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on Microsoft report, June 15, 2009)." No link is provided unfortunately.

"Google engaged in a 'honeypot' attack to trick Bing," he added. "In simple terms, Google's 'experiment' was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as 'click fraud.' That's right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn't already know. As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index."

He also mentions some design elements Google has employed since Bing's launch that are rather Bing-esque, which we've also pointed out in previous articles. "At the same time, we have been making steady, quiet progress on core search relevance," he said. "In October 2010 we released a series of big, noticeable improvements to Bing’s relevance. So big and noticeable that we are told Google took notice and began to worry. Then a short time later, here come the honeypot attacks. Is the timing purely coincidence? Are industry discussions about search quality to be ignored? Is this simply a response to the fact that some people in the industry are beginning to ask whether Bing is as good or in some cases better than Google on core web relevance?"

Search quality certainly has been in question lately, particularly with regards to content farms, but Bing doesn't appear to be doing anything much differently in that regard so far. Blekko is the only one that has really clamped down on those at this point, though Matt Cutts did finally acknowledge that the recent Google algorithm change is not the search engine's answer to content farms, and that they still have some projects they are working on in that department. He said they want to do it all algorithmically, as opposed to in a human-edited fashion like Blekko. Meanwhile, it looks like we might have a whole new kind of content farm emerging that doesn't even use humans to create the content.

Another side note in all of the Google/Bing drama is that Microsoft has now released a Chrome extension for support for the H.264 video codec, which Google recently announced would no longer be supported by Chrome. As WebProNews mentioned in a previous article on the subject, Microsoft has offered similar plug-ins for other browsers, so to say that this is in any way related to the search dispute is a bit of a stretch, but the timing is interesting.

While Bing and Google continue to duke it out, there is no clear winner in who is right and who is wrong. User opinions are widely varied.

What do you think of the whole situation? Has Bing done anything wrong in its practices? Was Google wrong to set up its "sting operation"? Share your thoughts.


Many thanks to Chris Crum, editor of WebProNews for the content of this article. If you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

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Until my next post, have a wonderful weekend!

Blekko & Bing Use Social To Improve Search

Blekko.com is a great search engine concept where users can use their Facebook friends to filter their internet searches and get the most from their search. In other words, when a user enables the service, the search engines crawls and collects data from the individuals Facebook friends to places (including websites and pages) that the friends have liked.

This endorsement of sorts from the users friends acts as a screening for the user and allows them to curate their searches and make the most out of their search launch. The concept is, if their friends like it, then they will too.

Blekko.com launched in November 2010 with a focus to use human editors to scan for authoritative websites all across the web. However, early in January 2011, Blekko revamped their approach to this and incorporated the current system that they now have. By approaching social networking and search engine results in this way, they have increased the sites popularity and the interaction of friends and users on the site.

In recent developments with Microsoft, a new social search engine was launched called Montage. This new service is currently in its experimental launch, but Microsoft is aiming to create media-rich and real-time online experiences that users can share with friends in their databases. Through the search function, users will be able to find, share and post information that is both aesthetically appealing and current for the purposes of sharing news and visuals. The launch is being geared up and worked with a team of 30 developers, writers and webmasters to ensure that it offers users a genuine experience and will hopefully become viral.

The direction of Blekko.com and the new release by Microsoft appears to be centered at customizing and targeting users online search time. The end goal result of both of these industry leaders is to create optimum search results for its users.


Many thanks to Jen Williams, guest author for Pronet Advertising for the content of this article. If you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at:
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Bing Makes Use Of Facebook Data

Bing introduced a handful of new features today. The one that will likely catch the most interest is the extension of its recent announcement regarding Facebook. Now, Bing will start showing you which of your Facebook friends have liked search results as they appear in your searches.


Social (Facebook)

"Starting today, if your search results include a specific link that has also been 'liked' by someone in your Facebook network the link will be highlighted as 'Liked' within Bing," Microsoft's Bing team explains. "This gets especially interesting for a query like 'Xbox' where my friend 'Liked' the 'Kinect' site and while our algorithms didn't feel it was relevant enough to make it the 'answer' we reference above, we are still able to indicate that my friend liked that link that happened to show up within the results."

This will be one clear advantage that Bing has over Google in terms of regular web search. Google has done a lot involving delivering social results, but Facebook data are THE social results that matter most - at least as long as Facebook is the dominant social site that it is today. With people constantly "liking" content all over the web, this can be a great indicator of relevance on a personalized level. It's going to catch your attention when you notice your friend appear in the search results.

Bing has been running a similar feature in search results for several weeks, including likes from places like CitySearch, but there should be a much more broad set of potential results that will include "like" info now. It appears the feature may still be rolling out, so if you don't see the "liked" results, you're not the only one. I do get a message about it when I search with Bing, but after some testing, I'm clearly not getting these results.

For example, as illustrated by Bing here, I should see when my friend has "liked" a movie on IMDB underneath the IMDB result for that movie on Bing. I have tested this with a specific movie that I made sure one of my friends had "liked" and that "like" did not appear under the result.


Sports Tickets

Bing has also added sports ticket info from FanSnap directly into the search experience, so users can view ticket results from 57 ticket companies, see ticket selection and price ranges, find the best ticket prices, and access a "view-from-seat" feature.

Image Search

Bing has also made changes to how it presents and organizes image search results. "The first thing you will notice is our new Instant Answer that organizes a rich collage of images directly into the main results page," Bing explains. "Once you click through to the 'images' page you will notice that we've populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image."

"Instead of making you qualify that you're looking for (Casablanca, Morocco or Casablanca, the movie), we have organized the tabs so that one simple click gets you to what you're looking for," Bing adds.

Local

For local search, Bing has added interior views, enhanced OpenTable integration for restaurants, real-time transit and Streetside for Mobile. Bing has partnered with EveryScape Eats, which provides imagery of restaurant interiors. These can be accessed by clicking "step inside" on Bing Local details pages (it utilzes Microsoft's Silverlight). For now, it includes about 5,000 restaurants, mostly in Boston, but the company will add locations and cities over time. We'll see if they expand beyond restaurants. Google has already been experimenting with taking pictures inside businesses.

Additionally, Bing users can access local details pages for restaurants that are signed up with OpenTable and search for available reservations from Bing itself.

Bing Mobile on the iPhone now has "up-to-the-minute" data for transit agencies (in Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco so far), and Streetside - Bing's eqivalent of Google's Streetview is available on Bing Mobile now. Bing has also made adjustments to its map style and a bunch of other updates to its iPhone and Andriod apps.


Will This All Help Bing Increase Its Market Share?

As we've discussed in the past, Bing has a lot of things that could work in its favor in terms of helping it grow its search market share, and some of these new features (namely the Facebook likes) won't hurt. The company also introduced some Facebook sharing features for Shopping Search a couple weeks ago.


Many thanks to Chris Crum, editor of WebProNews for the content of this article. If you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar) or subscribe to our feed at:
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You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
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Enjoy the rest of the week!