One of the strongest references and trust points for any product or service is for a friend to recommend a product or service. It happens every day, a friend asks you “Do you like the Kindle?” or “I noticed you have an iPhone, what do you think of it?”. It can happen at a party, at work or even online via email or Facebook. 
I recall a community event we were planning and at the first meeting one person had an iPhone by the time we finished the organisation of the event a couple of months later everyone had bought one…the power of “word of mouth”!!
The Power Of “World Of Mouth”
We now have word of mouth on steroids and it is called “World of Mouth” where people share their likes online (Facebook) to their friends and they pass it on and soon 1,000 people Globally have heard about your event, product or service.
Bing recently announced that they have “introduced Liked Results, which promotes links your friends have publicly liked or shared via Facebook…If your friends have publicly liked or shared any of the algorithmic search results shown on Bing, we will now surface them right below the result.”
If several of my friends that have been to Napa in the past have “Liked” Churchill Manor, it gets highlighted with their pictures and names – making it easier for me to quickly refine my search and decide where I should stay.
Now that starts to really up the game on the power play of social search with all its trust leverage and social proof to possibly be a game changer.
Bing’s Social Search
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE3h7xabHjoWhat Google Is Missing
Google doesn’t have the relationship with Facebook that Bing has and is missing the access to the “Like” data that is the Facebook walled garden and cannot reproduce those results. Recent research from comScore has shown that Bing is leading core search engine growth with it’s increase in search volume reaching 29% in 2010.
The growth of Facebook is also starting to make the Google look over its shoulder and wonder how it can stop the social networking gorilla invading its turf. Last year total time spent on Facebook surpassed Google for the first time.
Is Google’s domination under threat with Bing working in closer partnership with Facebook? The social web is changing the internet’s landscape and nothing is forever so what you see today will be quite different in 10 years.
What are your thoughts?
