Yesterday Bing announced a partnership w/FB and Twitter to include status updates in search results, and today Google announced the same thing with Twitter. Google’s also announced the addition of ’social search’ (ie photos from your friend’s Flickr feed or videos from their YouTube channel or playlists will appear where relevant @ the btm of your Google searches).

These are strong validations of the worth of social media as information & marketing communication, and point to a future where our ambient networks will have even more influence over our decision making, from what brands to buy to where to vacation and what wine to drink while you’re there. Read the rest of this entry »