Bing has just announced a small tweak to how its Social Sidebar functions — but it’s one that overcomes one of the Sidebar’s true limitations.

The change is this: When using the Social Sidebar, you can now tag up to five Facebook friends with whom you want to share your search results. Before this change, the Sidebar would automatically show a few connections under the “Friends Who Might Know” or “People Who Know” tabs. But you were limited to notifying/asking those suggestions, or to asking all of your friends at once via the “Ask Friends” feature. And that was hit and miss, because there’s no guarantee that Facebook would show your post to the people you wanted to see it.

You can now go beyond the suggestions and avoid having to ask all of your friends by using the “Choose friends to notify” tool.

The new tool isn’t live for me at the moment, but Bing says it has begun rolling out on Bing.com. Stefan Weitz, Bing Director, shows off the new feature in this video.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Social Search

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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