Bing Updates iPhone App: Bar Code Scanning, Social Integration & More

This morning, Microsoft’s Bing iPhone App was updated to include new search and social features. I was able to play around with the new features this morning and I wanted to share my experience with you.

In summary, the new Bing iPhone app includes:

• Improved products with landing page, results, details and instant answer
• Details with description, reviews and offers
• Image/bar code recognition of products
• Blended search including updates from your Twitter and Facebook networks when you do a search on the client
• “What’s hot” domain with xRank/Twitter tag cloud/feeds
• Business List and Map View integration

The most interesting addition to me is the camera view, where you can scan products and bar codes and Bing will return pricing information. I have one of those air duster cans on my desk, so I scanned that with the Bing iPhone app and it returned prices and descriptions from around the web. This feature somewhat reminds me of Google Goggles but with limited features. Here are screens:

It worked surprisingly well!

The next neat feature is integrating Twitter and Facebook directly in the app. I hooked up my Twitter account, which seemed to simply provide me an alternative to using Twitter.com or a Twitter app. Instead, I can view Tweets from my friends, search them, and reply back via the Bing app. Here are some screen shots:

They have an additional interface to reply to tweets or easily retweet them.

I then moved over to the movies section and checked out Toy Story 3:

Here is a local theatre with play times and locations for this movie:

I clicked on the map icon to get driving directions:

Here is the new shopping experience on Bing’s iPhone App:

I then navigated to laptop computers:

Then I clicked on the filter icon on the bottom right to only show Apple Computers:

These are just some of the new features on the new Bing App. You can check it out on the iTunes Store and download it for free.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.