Facebook shoves your face in Microsoft's Bing thing

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Microsoft has inked yet another search deal with Facebook that this time allows users to find photos in Bing that were uploaded to the world's biggest social network.

It would seem that Redmond's $240m stake in Mark Zuckerberg's company back in 2007 is still proving fruitful for the software maker.

Microsoft has been making its search engine more "social", in part by creating ever closer connections to Facebook.

And it cuts both ways: The company also has an exclusive deal with Facebook to serve up its search tech within the dominant network.

As of October 2010, personalised results were fed into Bing based on the opinions of "Friends" on Facebook. So it's hardly surprising to see Microsoft grabbing ever more content from the site, which claims more than 900 million stalkers users at the last count.

The move comes not long after Google debuted its "Gmail in personal search results" function, which has to be opted into by the company's users. It plonks results from Gmail directly into Google's search page.

Google, of course, has its own social network: Google+. Boss Larry Page has placed a sizeable amount of his reputation behind Google+ to try to make search a much more "personalised" experience that tailors the layout perfectly for advertisers.

As for Facebook photos in Bing, here's what Microsoft's Bing social team senior program manager Ian Lin had to say in a blog post on Thursday:

Now simply by clicking on a photo in the sidebar, you will be linked to a full experience on Bing where you can see more photos from your Facebook friends that match your search. From there, you can also search for additional photos, or simply browse the latest photos from your friends.

On Bing, your Facebook privacy settings are always respected. Your Facebook friends will only be able to see the photos you have made viewable, and you will only see photos your friends have made viewable, and your photos will never be shared with the public.

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