Now You Can Comment on Facebook Posts Directly From Bing

Interacting with your friends on Facebook just got a lot easier — If you’re a Bing user, that is.

Starting Friday, Bing will show comments from Facebook relevant to your search in the sidebar. From that search, you can Like a friend’s post, comment, or see the original post in its entirety on Facebook.

For instance, my search for "New Kids on the Block" brought up several posts from my friends who are fans, one who was excited to hear a NKOTB song on the radio, and another who was excited to be going to an NKOTB concert this summer. So, if I happened to be looking for a friend to go to the concert with, I could potentially contact one of them.

You can also add your own Facebook post directly from Bing. So, I could post a status asking if anyone would like to go to the concert with me, or express my own excitement about the event.

Friday’s new Facebook feature is an extension of the social sidebar Bing introduced last year. That feature brings in relevant social results from networks such as Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and Klout that are pertinent to your web search. Previously, you were not able to comment on or Like those posts.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Watch Out, Google: Bing Nabs 30% of Search Market

Microsoft’s search engine Bing now accounts for 30% of U.S. web searches, according to a Experian Hitwise report.

Bing-powered queries — made up of searches from Bing.com and Bing-powered searches on Yahoo and the websites of other notable partners — accounted for 30.01% of searches in April, according to the Hitwise report.

Bing-powered searches rose 5% and Bing.com searches rose 6% month-over-month, respectively. The number of Google searches dropped 3% from the month previous and 11% from the same period in 2011, accounting for 64.42% of U.S. searches in April. Bing-powered search, on the other hand, gained 11% in year-over-year percentages.

Bing, the second most popular search engine in the U.S., unveiled plans for a website redesign this week — aiming to make search more social.

The new social search will compete with Google’s Search Plus Your World update. Google’s integration of Google+ data into its search engine was unveiled in January.

Microsoft says the Bing update will introduce “a better way to search.” The update will incorporate personal search results into the search engine’s algorithm. The results will appear in a panel on the side of the page. This includes which “friends might know,” “people who know,” and related activity recently on Facebook. Microsoft announced updates would come slowly.

Do you think Bing’s new redesign will help the Microsoft search engine catch up to Google? Tell us in the comments if you would consider switching to Bing.