Bing has formed a partnership with Klout to “strengthen online search and online influence,” Bing announced Sept. 27.
The partnership came to be after Microsoft, which owns search engine
Bing, made a “strategic investment” in social media vendor Klout as
part of a multi-year agreement.
Microsoft will display Klout data on Bing. This will include a
person’s Klout score and topics on which they are “influential” will
appear in the People Who Know section of the sidebar.
“Klout as a social influence signal in the sidebar will really help
customers connect with the right experts on the topics they are
searching for,” Bing’s blog says.
On Klout’s recently unveiled moments feature, “we’ll begin surfacing
Bing highlights on some Klout users profiles, demonstrating how search
can be a powerful new indicator of online influence,” the blog says.
“What’s interesting about our work on the Klout service is that, for
the first time, Bing is an outbound signal for influence. Search as a
new outbound signal is an interesting new development in the way we
think about big data and how it can add value to lots of the other
services we use each day.”
The official Klout blog
says Bing’s provision of additional data “has long been one of the
missing signals in our effort to fully recognize a person’s influence.”
“The coverage of people who have Bing data associated to their Klout
account will continue to increase as Klout helps surface more
influencers in Bing search.”
Neither company would reveal details of the “strategic investment.”
