Social influence site, Klout, just got a giant boost from Microsoft as the company has announced that they will be investing in the platform and utilizing the service with its search results.
Microsoft and Klout both believe that humans are at the center of finding great content, so by bringing Microsoft content engine and Klout’s social engine together, the two feel that they will be able to enhance the content discovery process. Microsoft states:
Klout brings a deep social DNA to the table having done some very cool and exciting work to help people understand social influence, find their voice and have an impact on the world. When we combine that expertise with the work our Bing team has done on the marriage of search and social, along with the big science challenges around relevance and ranking (especially people ranking), there are exciting possibilities for what we can do together for web users. Our engineering teams will work together to expand the scope or social search and influence.
Microsoft has always been big on social integration, as noted by their recent enhancements with social integration with Bing earlier this year.
Klout is a service that attempts to rank your social ability to be influential. The service applies a number to you that Microsoft (and other third-party sites) can use to classify you across many different metrics. With Microsoft including this data now with Bing, it should allow the search engine to help you connect with those who are influential in the topics you are looking to explore.
The match-up is a dynamic marriage of search and social and it remains to be seen how the consumer will react to this feature. Microsoft says that the Bing integration is only the start of this relationship, so expect to see me content integration in the near future.
Source: Bing
