Bing lets shoppers poll their Facebook friends before they buy

Microsoft’s Bing search engine rolled out a social network integration in its Shopping section today that lets shoppers on the Bing Shopping section of the site announce their purchase plans to friends on Facebook, Twitter and email, in hopes of getting feedback from friends on whether to buy or not.

The implementation is simple, which means it works and isn’t confusing. For some items in Bing Shopping, you get additional buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and email. Click one to launch a message or update on the service.

Bing puts in a shortened URL and product name, but leaves it to you to craft the text of the message. Hurray for that.

I’m still trying to find out who pays who for what between Microsoft and Facebook and advertisers.

Bing managers Lawrence Lam and Sonam Saxena wrote in a blog post, “We see our users using it not only to get feedback on price but on whether a particular product would look good on them, has a better model, etc.”

The Internet will probably concoct an entirely different use for Bing’s tie-in, but that’s the fun of it.