[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Microsoft has made a strategic investment in Klout. The Redmond giant has also signed a multi-year agreement where Bing will become one of Klout’s most significant partners.  The engineering teams of the two companies will work together to expand the scope of social search and influence, says Microsoft.

Derrick Connell  (Corporate vice president, Bing):  Search as a new outbound signal is an interesting new development in the way we think about big data and how it can add value to lots of the other services we use each day.

Klout scores and influential topics will surface in Bing for many of the experts in the People Who Know section of the sidebar. The Klout Score and topics are a helpful signal for understanding why you should trust recommendations from these experts, says Klout. By clicking through to those users’ Klout profiles, you can see their best moments and gain additional context and insights into their expertise.

As part of the partnership, Bing will provide additional data to Klout. here will be two data points from Bing that will initially be highlighted as part of Klout moments. Experts who appear in Bing’s “People Who Know” section of the sidebar will be recognized on Klout. Influencers who have a Wikipedia account associated with their Klout profile will also be rewarded for the frequency that they are searched on Bing. Over the next few months, Klout will include this data in the Klout Score and continue to add signals generated from Bing searches.

[Image Courtesy: Klout]