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John Callaham
This weekend, Microsoft quietly launched SNIPP3T for the iPhone, an app that grabs news and information on the internet about celebrities. As it turns out, it comes from Microsoft's Bing team in an effort to expand the search service's influence beyond the web browser.
Microsoft says that, according to their data, 86 percent of all mobile users interact with the Internet with apps with the other 14 percent via web browsers. A four person team at Microsoft's Beijing office created SNIPP3T with the goal to show that Bing's data could be used in this kind of format. Microsoft team member , Donald Soog stated, "We're showing here that we can actually use the existing data that we have and then put it into maybe a slightly different skin, an app experience, and then provide an awesome experience to a user."
Microsoft's blog posts hints that SNIPP3T will come to other platforms besides the iPhone. Alisher Saydalikhodjayev, one of the company's Bing Product Marketing Manager, also hints that the reason the iPhone was targeted first for the app was to go after the iPhone's larger audience, saying, "We're no longer just an OS company. We're evolving into more of a services and cloud company. And within services you have to go after users."
What do you think of Microsoft's plans to expand Bing with apps that uses its data?
Source: Microsoft
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