Microsoft’s search engine Bing and Klout announced a strategic partnership Thursday that will allow Microsoft to invest in the site that attempts to measure internet influence and display Klout scores within Bing search results.
In a blog post announcing that Bing would become one of Klout’s “most significant partners,“ Klout CEO Joe Fernandez explained how the two will be a good fit:
Microsoft and Klout both believe that the growth of the social web and the increasing importance of your online identity are fundamentally transforming the Internet, making it even more important to understand people, not just pages. Like Microsoft, Klout is a friend to all social networks. We both want to help everyone discover relevant people regardless of the specific networks on which they’re active. And we believe we’ve only just begun to tap into the knowledge and insights “search through people” will enable, now and into the future.
While Bing has struggled to gain popularity as a search engine in the face of Google’s dominance, Klout has received a good deal of press and recognition recently, and its user stats might provided a needed boost for Bing’s results. Plenty of people are skeptical about Klout’s scoring of a person’s digital influence, but there’s certainly money to be made in finding rabid social media users and connecting them with brands.
Microsoft’s investment will bring a user’s Klout profile into search results on the site, and Bing will provide additional data to Klout. Klout recently revamped its scoring techniques for assigning each users a number, bringing a greater number of social media platforms and websites into account. So adding a person’s search results on Bing seems like a natural fit as the company expands its reach and desire to do “search through people.”
