Tag Archives: bing

Bing’s Local Lens app – potential for local news journalists?

Via Lost Remote, a demonstration of a new application from Bing (Microsoft’s search property). Local Lens is a ‘neighbourhood blog app’ and can plot hundreds of blogs within a specific area on a map. The most recent posts will also be displayed and tweets can be overlayed on the map too.

The app is currently in beta and so only covers a group of US cities at the moment. The Los Angeles map is at this link and shown below:

Map from Bing's Local Lens application

But there’s potential here for tracking how local news and issues break and spread on blogs, as well as creating a visualisation of local social media reaction to an event or report.


FT.com: Microsoft unlikely to pay users to leave Google

Microsoft’s senior vice-president for online services said the company is not focused on ‘getting non-Google content,’ reports the FT.

Satya Nadella’s comments imply the company would be unlikely to pay newspaper owners and other publishers for removing their content from Google, an idea that had been discussed with News Corp.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s senior vice-president for online services, refused to comment directly on talks with News Corp, but said that Bing was not looking to get a leg-up on Google by securing preferential access to information. ‘That’s not at all a focus for us,” he said, adding: “We generally are not focused on getting non-Google content.”

Full story at this link…

Channel 4 News: @robertandrews and @ciaranj debate News International, Bing and Google

Further to yesterday’s news from the Financial Times that Microsoft is considering paying for news content to appear on its search engine Bing (in a ‘web pact’ with News International), Channel 4 News last night debated the potential impact this could have on the market.

Krishnan Guru-Murphy discussed with paidContent:UK editor, Robert Andrews, and head of social media at global media agency Mindshare, Ciarán Norris.

FT.com: ‘Web pact’ for Microsoft and News Corp?

The companies have declined to comment, but the FT reports that Microsoft – which owns search engine Bing – has entered discussions with News Corp ‘over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to ‘de-index’ its news websites from Google’.

It reports:

“The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

“However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.”

Full story at this link…