Microsoft has rolled out a brand new incentive to appeal to and maintain a lot more Bing customers: Group deals.
On March three, Microsoft introduced “Bing deals” for the desktop and mobile (m.bing.com) via a partnership with The Dealmap. Via the partnership, Bing customers in the U.S. will get access to “extra than 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities and towns,” according to Microsoft. The Dealmap aggregates group offers from sources including Groupon,
Windows 7 Activation, Living Social and Restaurant.com, among other sites.
Update: For now, on the mobile front,
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, Bing deals are for iPhone and Android phones only, as reader @thedavidk pointed out. Microsoft’s official statement: “The (deals) functionality is based on HTML5 and will work with phones that support it, but today is being released for iOS and Android. Windows Phone 7 announced that they will have HTML5 support in an update later this calendar year, at which point offers will work great on Windows Phone.”
A Microsoft spokesperson said, when I asked about wider availability: “Offers are currently available in the U.S. only. We’re working to expand support to much more markets,
Windows 7 Key, and will announce further locations as they become available.”
Microsoft has used a variety of financial promotions to entice users to try Bing over the years. Last year, the company discontinued its Bing Cashback program — via which the company paid consumers to use its Bing search engine to shop — claiming the program never really took hold.
More recently,
Office 2007 Key, Microsoft had better success by giving away virtual Farmville cash to get consumers to try Bing (or at least follow Bing on Facebook…).
There’s one rather odd complication to the Microsoft-Dealmap partnership called out by Silicon Alley Insider’s Matt Rosoff:
“The Dealmap uses Google Maps to display its maps today. The Bing deal won’t change that. But the CTO of Dealmap’s parent company Center’d is Chandu Thota,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, who previously led development for Bing Maps, so the company is very familiar with how Microsoft’s mapping service works and could be making a switch in the future.”