Bing’s Social Sidebar Gains Klout Scores & People Recommendations

Klout has become the latest social service to be integrated into the new Bing Social Sidebar that was launched earlier this year. Bing says that Klout scores will now appear next to people surfaced in the sidebar, plus Klout’s data will be used to help determine some of the people who show. From Bing’s post: […]

Klout has become the latest social service to be integrated into the new Bing Social Sidebar that was launched earlier this year.

Bing says that Klout scores will now appear next to people surfaced in the sidebar, plus Klout’s data will be used to help determine some of the people who show. From Bing’s post:

On Bing, we will surface Klout scores and influential topics for many of the experts 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.

Here’s an example of how it will appear:

You can see how a search was done, bringing up “People Who Know” suggestions. Klout’s data is now being used to help figure out some of the people who may be showing here, plus scores for those people are also shown:

The focus on scores is somewhat surprising, given that Klout itself recently downplayed scores as part of a redesign Klout launched last month.

Bing is also feeding back information to Klout. From Klout’s blog post:

Search data has long been one of the missing signals in our effort to fully recognize a person’s influence. Just as Wikipedia articles can reflect a person’s real world influence, search results for a person signal accomplishments achieved beyond social networks and serve to influence others.

There will be two data points from Bing that will initially be highlighted as part of Klout moments. Experts who appear in Bing’s “People Who Know” section of the sidebar will be recognized on Klout. Influencers who have a Wikipedia account associated with their Klout profile will also be rewarded for the frequency that they are searched on Bing.

It highlighted an example of this for Bill Gates, and how his profile shows Bing search volume activity:

Klout is the latest of social services to be brought into Bing’s Social Sidebar. Foursquare was added to Bing in July, and Quora was added to Bing in August. As part of the new partnership, Microsoft has also made an investment in Klout. Our separate story covers this more: Klout Gains Clout With Microsoft Investment.