Microsoft today announced a partnership with Reddit to surface the social news site’s content high up in Bing search results, so that searching for specific Reddit communities, pages, and info will spit back information gleaned from subreddits, AMAs, and other threads in a dedicated section. The news, part of a suite of new artificial intelligence-powered features underlying Bing’s search function, works by way of what Microsoft calls intelligent search. The company says intelligent search uses natural language processing to pair Reddit content with the appropriate search terms.
The Reddit integration works in three ways. First, by typing in the name of a subreddit on Bing, you’ll get a live snapchat of that subreddit’s top threads displayed in the search results with links to the individual pages. Bing will also include Reddit AMA questions and answers for a celebrity who’s done an AMA, with the content showing up on the person’s search card, which will be accessible just by searching that person’s name. The last feature the integration provides will let Bing populate Reddit answers to questions typed into search that are gleaned from popular subreddits like AskReddit. That way, typing a question into Bing with the word “reddit” tagged on the end will surface answers from within relevant on-site threads.
Reddit users have long clamored for a better way to search the site’s wealth of information, nearly all of which is user-generated and difficult to parse after it’s been organized by Reddit’s algorithms and largely replaced by a new wave of images, text posts, videos, and links. Working with Microsoft, and using the company’s sizable computing resources and AI prowess, is a solid way to make its site more searchable and to bring users back to old threads. Reddit says it will also start including upcoming AMAs in search results, something the site hopes will drive even more interest for its custom Q&A format.
“All this amazing content is sitting there. As long as it is just on Reddit, we know we're missing out on a much broader audience. We know there are people who are searching for this content, but now we’re providing them a world-class product to find it,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said today at Microsoft’s AI-focused Bing event in San Francisco. “We’re just getting used to talking to the robot and expecting a good answer. The challenge here is that there’s a lot of nuance when you’re asking these kind of open-ended questions. Reddit is the largest data set in the English-speaking world of vetted, nuanced responses.”
Yet whether this partnership will really spur more people using Bing is less certain. Microsoft’s search engine has under 5 percent of the global search engine market share on desktop and mobile, compared with Google’s 80 percent share, according to NetMarketShare’s November 2017 statistics. Microsoft hopes that by partnering directly with websites that generate a substantial amount of the web’s most engaging and highest viewed content, it might lure some users away from Google. But it’s hard to see how any AI advancement, no matter how sophisticated or how tailored to specific internet communities, will be able to break the ecosystem lock-in Google has over Chrome, Gmail, and Android users. At the very least, it gives existing Bing users a more pleasant way to find valuable Reddit threads that would otherwise be lost to time.
Comments
I do wonder if Microsoft will buy Reddit……. It seems like a good idea.
By Daniel Su on 12.13.17 5:33pm
Man, the community would flip. I do feel like MS would probably be able to crack down on the Nazi’s and White Supremacists… But I just don’t see a good endgame for MS to take on that responsibility.
By ench on 12.13.17 5:55pm
That would probably be a surefire way to kill Reddit, so I hope Microsoft takes that outcome into account if it ever considers it.
By mikedon on 12.13.17 6:07pm
In what way? They bought LinkedIn and they seem to be doing absolutely fine. They bought Mixer and it’s a growing community.
By Daniel Su on 12.14.17 12:21am
Mixer was nothing before Microsoft. LinkedIn has a mature population that won’t change social network just because the other ’’team’’ bought it (besides there isn’t another good social network that works the same way’’.
By OroP on 12.14.17 5:56am
LinkedIn and Microsoft make sense as a pairing, corporate through and through. The Reddit culture is not the same.
By ench on 12.14.17 11:40am
hence why I think Reddit should be like LinkedIn, independent from Microsoft but under the same banner.
By Daniel Su on 12.14.17 6:12pm
You mean snapshot?
By thunderbird32 on 12.13.17 5:47pm
No no. A live Snapchat. Which means if we just wait 3 months Instagram will rip it off but better.
By Delucifer on 12.14.17 12:30am
For the last 4-5 years, I have only used Google for Streetview. I have used Bing exclusively since and actually find it a lot better for search results and images. At first I just tried Bing to see if it was worth while and was going to go back to Google after a week, but personally, I find Bing a lot better in almost every aspect.
By Praxius on 12.13.17 6:15pm
Bing (for US residents) is good, much better than the internet hate it gets. I do use it, and i won’t lie, i do like the free MS rewards which turns into free Xbox Live /Games Pass codes.
However, google maps is still a better offering than what Bing currently offers.
By NoPokyMe on 12.13.17 6:49pm
Ya definitely. As a student in college, I use a search engine a lot to find programming questions, random topics, etc. but 90%+ of the time I’m just going to Wikipedia/stack overflow/yahoo answers/etc. It doesn’t take brilliant search to get the really obvious stuff.
Google Maps is definitely the one google service I don’t think I could do away with in my life. I also use google keep extensively but I am sure a suitable replacement exists.
Plus it always banks me enough Microsoft Rewards points so that when I go home for winter/summer I can play Xbox Live for free
By uditrana on 12.13.17 7:10pm
Wait, what? You can get stuff for the xbox if you use Bing? I had no clue that was the case.
By Katholikos on 12.14.17 3:21am
Yeah Bing Rewards. It’s available in many countries now.
Simply log into your Hotmail/Outlook account while using Bing, or browsing using Edge or even buying things in the Microsoft Store all adds up with Bing Reward Points.
Also doing a few quizes they email you (mostly trivia stuff) gives you bonus points.
As they add up, you can set goals for your rewards, like Xbox & Store Gift Cards, enter sweepstakes for a free Xbox or Surface Device and so on….. Of give your points to charity, if that’s your thing.
It takes a while to add up, but considering it’s free stuff for doing the same thing you do every day through Googling, why not? And I find Bing just as good or better, so….
By Praxius on 12.14.17 3:39am
I am at 388,222 lifetime points. A month of XBox live is 6800 points. That’s 57 months or almost 5 years of XBox. That being said, I cash my points in on Amazon $5 cards. That’s a lot of free Amazon stuff.
By sporkinum on 12.14.17 4:36pm
Yes but a year of Xbox Live, and a year of Game pass, are only 29,000 each. A better deal if you get the annual passes with your points vs monthly.
By NoPokyMe on 12.14.17 7:41pm
I used to use Live Search before it rebranded, and liked it quite a bit. It was before Google did their visual refreshes with cards, etc.
I now use Ecosia as my default which gets its results from Bing.
By Omen_20 on 12.14.17 2:34pm