Zhu Commented MS BING’s New Search at ICA Mini-Plenary

Zhu Commented MS BING’s New Search at ICA Mini-Plenary

At the 2012 annual conference of International Communication Association, Jonathan Zhu served one of the three respondents to comment on Microsoft Bing’s new search service (http://bing.com/new, which is currently only available in the U. S.), showcased by Senior Director of Bing Search, Stefan Weitz, in his Mini-Plenary speech on May 25, 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona. The new service, appeared as a sidebar on the right side of Bing’s interface, embeds a number of “social search” features. In his responses to Weitz’s presentation, Zhu praised Bing for presenting the social search functions in a “civilized” interface than the intrusive versions under testing by some other social search engines. However, Zhu questioned whether Bing’s design would fly given its reliance on user’s strong social relations (which are usually better for emotion support than information exchange) and substantive efforts (which run against the minimal efforts principle of web use). Elizabeth Van Couvering of London School of Economics and Alex Halavais of Arizona State University were the two other respondents, both of whom discussed business model, privacy, and other issues in social search.