This post is a part of the Yahoo! gets Microsoftified series – where we cover the facts, points of view, and details of the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal. To see all posts of the series, click here. More posts are coming soon!
This morning, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10-year search deal that will see the two companies join forces to take on Google. Basically, Microsoft’s technology will power Yahoo’s search results, while Yahoo will be charged with selling ads for both companies’ search sites. Here are the facts:
Basics:
- Yahoo is outsourcing search on its web properties to Microsoft
- Microsoft is providing the technology (Bing), while Yahoo will deliver the worldwide sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers
- Ad sales will be handled by Microsoft’s AdCenter sales tool
- Microsoft is getting the reach (scale) that Yahoo has with its web properties while Yahoo is getting superior technology and the ability to save by not having a dedicated search team
- The companies will share resources and combine engineering efforts
- Combined, the two companies make up 30% of the search market, compared to Google – which still controls more than twice that amount
- The deal is for a time period of 10 years Read more »
Posted in
Bing,
Business,
Decisions,
Featured,
Industry News,
Microsoft,
Search,
Yahoo!
BingTweets: after
BingTweets is a great idea that lacks a great user interface (UI). This – overall – hinders the user experience (UX). As design-obsessed as I am, I’ve taken the liberty to create a UI of what BingTweets “could” look like. If it were to look like this, then I believe people would take it a bit more seriously.
If you’re not aware of it by now, I’m a twitterholic. So, I wanted to know my followers’ opinions about Microsoft’s BingTweets. After the service was released, I asked my Twitter friends the following question: “What do you think of BingTweets?” I started to receive responses that didn’t make sense to me. One response stated “I don’t have a need for it. Twitter is a better mobile experience to me anyway. I prefer UberTwitter 4 BBerry.” This user isn’t even aware of what BingTweets really is! And that’s a problem. It’s obvious that the point of the site is not immediately clear to users upon first glance. Responding to my question on Twitter, another user stated “[I] Won’t be using it anytime soon.” If the purpose of BingTweets were made more clear, then these users would – obviously – have a different opinion about the product! When a user gets to bingtweets.com, things seem “a bit dizzy” – wrote another respondent.
To get to the chase, users do not see the sole purpose of BingTweets when they get to the site. The user does not see an area for a “call to action,” (except for “search results” – which is not the purpose of the site). Therefore, the site seems a little off and can have a dizzy look associated with it. Some may attribute the service and think that “it’s just Microsoft trying to ride off of Twitter’s coattails to promote Bing.” It’s truly upsetting to me that users think this, because BingTweets has incredible potential that is masked behind 5 content areas of “I’m not sure what the point is here.”
In order to help BingTweets out a bit, I decided to study the design and then mock up a design of my own – using seven key concepts that may help the user experience: Read more »
Posted in
Bing,
Microsoft,
User Interface,
User experience
Sometime late last evening, Microsoft launched its latest addition to its Bing decision engine. Dubbed Bing Tweets, the new destination is a mash up of real-time Twitter search with Bing web results (something Microsoft apparently calls Bing Insights). Interestingly, the site is a second series of partnerships between Microsoft and Federated Media – the first being ExecTweets. And while there is a plethora of real-time search engines cropping up (seemingly left and right nowadays), Bing Tweets may be that one place that takes real-time search mainstream.
Bing Tweets is described as combining “Twitter trends with Bing search results, enabling you to see deeper, real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter. You can also search for anything in the BingTweets search box (at the top right of every page) and see Bing search results alongside the most recent related tweets.”
Read more »
Posted in
Bing,
Business,
Google,
Marketing,
Microsoft
This post is a part of the Yahoo! gets Microsoftified series – where we cover the facts, points of view, and details of the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal. To see all posts of the series, click here. More posts are coming soon!