Bing’s New Social-Friendly Search Interface Now Live

The new Bing interface, with a healthy dose of social connections and discovery, is now live for all users.

Bing’s announcement today says that anyone can access the new interface at www.bing.com/new, but you should also see a new message atop the Bing home page that invites you to try “the best search, now with people from your social networks.”

Even without clicking the “Check it out” link or first going to www.bing.com/new, I was shown the new, three-column display on a search for “seattle restaurants.”

When Bing announced the new interface last week, it included “Snapshots” — a new version of search results that shows additional information about each listing in the middle panel. A Bing spokesperson tells us that that feature is still about a week away from going live on Bing.com.

If you missed the original announcement last week, the new Bing interface adds various social elements to search results, including a “social sidebar” that pulls in friend and expert information from Facebook and Twitter related to your search query. For more on how it works, see our stories from last week:

• Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar
• Head-To-Head: Bing’s Social Search Vs. Google’s Search Plus Your World

Bing says the new interface is also available on Bing mobile (m.bing.com) with a layout that’s optimized for smaller screens and touch-based input.