Bing gets new features including FourSquare integration

Microsoft unveiled some new features for its search engine Bing last week. In addition to the new version for iPhone, Bing has several larger changes coming, including integration with FourSquare--the service that lets you check in with your friends and let them know exactly where you are (at the office, the coffee shop, the airport and so forth). How much your friends want to know this and how much detail you want people to know about your location is a personal choice, but this type of geolocation tool is becoming increasingly popular and it makes sense on some level for Microsoft to incorporate this into Bing results.

Microsoft is displaying FourSquare data on a Silverlight map so you can see who is checking in at a specific location, who is 'mayor' there--that is, the person who checks in most often--and other types of information found through the FourSquare service. Microsoft is seeing it less as a friend-driven service, and more as a way to check what the locals think about an attraction or location.

In an example, from the blog post announcing the Bing changes, it says if you are traveling in New York for a week and you want to find a cool place to go in Greenwich Village, you can focus on that area of the map. Then, using FourSquare data you can find out what people are saying about various places and what's popular. I can see this being moderately useful, but it really only gives you a small cross-section of people who are using this service and who happen to be checking in at that moment from that location. 

A better choice might be Yelp, which provides you with reviews of restaurants and other businesses in an area, and is very useful when visiting a new place. There was some talk a few months ago of Google buying Yelp, but it never happened. I still think it would be a great match for Google, but if Bing is getting into location awareness information, they might consider making an offer too.

For now, FourSquare is getting them into the geolocation game and that could be a useful service moving forward.

For more information:
- see the Microsoft blog post

Related Articles:
Location-based data needs content management
Bing updates iPhone App
Ballmer discusses Bing's place in the market
New data suggests Google search in a league of its own
Bing increases market share in October, but pulls from Yahoo!