I have just been DMed by Jamie Thomson (@jamiet) who pointed me to the Twitter search of “searchfest bing” which is full of people singing their praises for Stefan Weitz (@Stefanweitz) and some of Bing’s features, especially Bing Maps.
Most of the tweets seem to be commenting on just how funny Stefan is, some people even saying they will try Bing only because Stefan had them in stitches. Among the tweets were several mentioning how great Bing Maps and its apps are.
For me it is quite surprising that I didn’t see any negative tweets about Bing considering it has such a small percentage of the search market and most people still prefer to use Google. At the same time its a little disappointing more people aren’t aware of some of the features of Bing.
SEMpdx, the organisers of the event, have written an article highlighting some of what Stefan said in the keynote speech, below are the 3 most interesting points.
- 84 million users, 60% increase since launch
- 5 in 10 know Bing as a search engine
- 8 months of consecutive growth
Stefan went on to explain several areas of search under headings such as “Where is Search Going?”, “Web of Objects” and “Spacial Search” that Microsoft see as important.
Its good to see Bing, or at the very least the presentation, getting the praise it deserves from people who should be able to critique it with some kind of authority as they are attendees of SearchFest. It will be interesting to see what Bing has achieved this time next year at SearchFest, I would imagine a lot more people would be aware of Bing’s features through continued advertising by Microsoft and a larger user base.
