• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 3, 2009

Microsoft has begun inviting Facebook fans to sign up and test a program it calls Bing & Ping, which will let them share what they search for on Bing with friends through Facebook, Twitter, email, and possibly other social sites that are soon to be announced.

Fans will have the opportunity to share restaurant recommendations and local movie times, post a flight status with Facebook friends, and more. Microsoft plans to share more information in the "coming days."

Bing's Nicholas Kerr provides examples related to football in a blog post on how someone might use the new tool. "Say you use Bing's Instant Answers feature to check the score of the game, and you notice that your buddy's favorite team has just been beaten pretty handily," he writes. "Say you want to 'delicately' remind him of their less-than-stellar moves with the ball." Bing & Ping lets you share the NFL instant answer through social networks, reminding friends that their team has no defense.

Many of Bing's 67,676 Facebook fans, such as Imran Hussain, Suzy Tonini and Justin Scarborough, have already posted comments asking Microsoft to sign them up. "can i be in bing and ping please???" Scarborough writes on Bing's Facebook page wall.

Scarborough, senior search manager at Razorfish, says: "I was hoping to get in, but I haven't received an invite yet." He wants to use the service for research purposes for the agency.

Those who want to take the feature for a test drive need to become a fan of Bing's Facebook page. If invited, fans must submit their Windows Live ID to receive additional details of the feature and examples of how to use Bing & Ping.

Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer, says people who are planning a trip might want to share the information with friends they plan to take a trip with, but sharing the information broadly across all your Facebook friends really doesn't make sense. "It seems you would only want to share the information with specific people," she says.

The idea of social networks becoming a continually changing database of what consumers are interested in and what they might want to purchase at any given time is a theme carried through Williamson's latest report, titled "Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond."

Social networks are not just a superficial way for people to share quotes from music lyrics or photos of their kids or play games. Yes, "staying in touch with friends" remains the most common reason consumers continue to come back. But the true value resides much deeper.

"The information on Facebook should be turned into a clickable link," Williamson says. "If the link links to Bing, a search may come up automatically. Of course, this is all speculation until they make the announcement. It could be a tighter integration between Bing and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It might get more people who would have searched on Google searching on Bing."