Today, Bing is announcing that its knowledge and action graph will be available to developers via a new API. With this new API, developers can enhance their apps by exposing rich data from the Bing knowledge and action graph directly in their apps. Whether you have a messaging app or a music app, your users shouldn’t have to “go to search” to get information related to what they’re doing in your app. With Bing’s new API, you can expose the relevant information to your users directly within your apps, keeping them more engaged. If you’re a developer, email us at partnerwithbing@microsoft.com to request access to this API.

WHY INTEGRATE BING?

Today, Bing has over a billion entities (people, places, and things) and the number is growing every day. For those

entities, we have over 21 billion associated facts, 18 billion links to key actions and over 5 billion relationships between entities. Millions of Bing users around the globe use this rich information every day, in bing.com, Cortana, Xbox, Office and more. Imagine what your application can do with this powerful technology.

Developers can innovate using this enormous asset to fulfill their users’ information needs and help users perform searches in context, instead of forcing users to leave their apps to perform searches. For instance, a messaging app could add a Bing snapshot with actionable info on a restaurant, making it easier for a group to plan an evening. A social media app could augment users’ photos with information about the locations of each photo. A news app could show definitions and descriptions of terms that users want to drill into. A music app could augment content with snapshots of artists and songs. Where Bing has rights to share the data, we want to empower the developer community to create rich, innovative experiences that delight.

ACCESS BING SNAPSHOTS ON ANDROID IN OTHER APPS

To give developers and consumers the chance to experience this capability we are updating the Bing App on Android with snapshots from the knowledge and action graph available on tap. The days of having to interrupt what you’re doing just so you can do a search are over. Say you’re in your favorite social media app and you see your friend’s posting about a recent trip. Just long-press the home button and Bing will read the contents of your screen, identify the destination your friend posted about, and present you with information that you can find on the web to learn more, and a snapshot showing key facts about that destination, along with connections into relevant apps and services, like Lonely Planet. You get all this information without ever having to leave the app.

Here’s a quick demo video:

While we are excited that these snapshots enhance applications with rich knowledge and actions, we believe this is just the start. By working with developers to bring Bing’s rich data and actions directly into their applications or services, we can address very real needs for developers and join hands to delight users.

We are registering interest now for the Bing knowledge and action graph API, making it available to the first set of developers in the Fall, in addition to the Bing APIs already available on http://www.bing.com/dev/en-us/dev-center. Developers can request access to the Bing knowledge and action graph API by emailing partnerwithbing@microsoft.com. We hope to work closely with those who reach out to understand their scenarios and needs.

We welcome developers to leverage this technology in new ways to delight users, and look forward to a future where the best product experiences are made better with Bing.

Gurpreet Pall – Director of Program Management, Bing for Partners