Analysts Award 2010 to Bing in Social

Google, despite partnering with social gaming giant Zynga and acquiring social game makers LabPixies and SocialDeck, social aggregator Angstro and social application power Slide, hasn't offered anything of the sort in 2010.

Bing, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized as a scrappy upstart, has just shy of 12 percent market share to Google's 66 percent. But it's Bing that has gained social mindshare this year, analysts agreed.  

IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds told eWEEK Bing has definitely played the social theme more skillfully than Google in 2010.

"The December release of the Facebook social search feature and its result set personalized through the lens of the searcher's friend network is the first real foray into socially modulated Web search."

Forrester Research Augie Ray agreed that that Bing has been doing more socially innovative things than Google in 2010.

Even so, he said all signs point to Google gearing up for a significant social launch early in 2011. Google, after all, has the advantage of owning a massively scalable search platform that serves 10 billion queries per month.

Google's +1 initiative will enable social connections, and presumably social gaming. But that social layer cake isn't expected until sometime in 2011.

"I don't know if this is really a 'make or break' year for Google in terms of social because the Web and social media will continue to evolve for years to come, but each passing year is certainly a lost opportunity for the Web 1.0 pioneer."

"This is definitely a space to watch, not least because Google does not want to be runner up in social," Reynolds added.