Bing, Fox Tap Social To Take Pulse Of State Of The Union

Barack-ObamaBing will partner with Fox News to bring an interactive experience to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday. The platform, Bing Pulse, will gather social media sentiment and feedback from viewers in real-time.

Bing's political site will host the event. Site visitors will need to enter their gender and political affiliation. The system will allow a comment or reaction from the same person every five seconds. A live tracker will count the number of "pulses" submitted and line graphs will show how people react to the language and the speech.

The results will split gender and affiliation to show how the individual groups react.

The Bing Beat, a live social sentiment analyzer, will also use Twitter tweets to analyze issues around gun control, immigration and fiscal cliff, according to Mark Penn, Microsoft CVP of strategic and special projects. The feedback will offer information on positive or negative reactions about a specific topic, according to Penn.

This "nonpartisan" effort builds on Bing's election coverage last fall, when the site gathered election news and data. The Bing Elections 2012 site drew nearly 8 million visitors on election night.

In separate prepared videos, former President Jimmy Carter and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich expressed their thoughts on the efforts. Gingrich called it the nation's largest "focus group" that hopefully will resonate with the nation's leaders.

Bing is advertising both on-air with promotions through a partnership with Fox. As well as amplifying the news through Bing’s social media sites. Penn said the White House was not involved with the project.

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