That’s right – social media is going commercial. Bing has launched a new sharing app that lets you share your shopping search results with any of your friends or followers. According to the Bing Blog:
75% of shoppers seek advice from others even when shopping online and now Bing shoppers can too!… You’ve had sharing for certain results like news and entertainment for a few months and now we bring you this sharing experience into Bing Shopping! With a single click you can ask for advice from your friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter for their take on a product you saw on Bing Shopping. You can even share it the old fashioned way – over email! We see our users using it not only to get feedback on price but on whether a particular product would look good on them, has a better model, etc.
Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling comments,
One could argue that the group-buying phenomenon, exemplified by sites like Groupon and LivingSocial (although there are literally dozens more), also falls into the category — though there isn’t any interaction among the participants. I’ve also argued in the past that social shopping is a natural area for Facebook and that the site could rival the largest comparison sites if it chose to develop it and/or partner with a product database (e.g., PriceGrabber).
Once shared, the shared item can show up on Twitter like this:
Will social media jump into the sales pool and will group think control the universe? Possibly. The mobile market alone holds huge possibilities for real time experiences, and we can expect to see plenty more ideas like this popping up: (again from Community Bing Blog)
You can now search Bing Shopping for the HTC HD2 Smartphone, and ask your friends on Facebook and Twitter if Bing Shopping is giving you the best price after cashback or if this is the one you should buy.
Tags: Bing Shopping, Facebook, mobile, Twitter