Bing's sidebar is an interesting idea, but, similar to the snapshot feature, social integration is likely to be most helpful when you're searching for commercial information such as hotel or restaurant recommendations, or finding opinions about cars, new gadgets, and movies.

Nevertheless, Bing is taking an interesting approach to social integration that feels very different from what Google is doing. The real test for Bing is whether users will find its new features engaging enough to give up on Google for good.

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