“Bing already lets you view Facebook updates and comments from your friends in sidebar, but now you’ll also be able to add your own Likes and comments to your friends’ Facebook posts directly from Bing,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is yet another step in Bing’s efforts to make it easier for people to leverage all of the incredible information across the web and content within their social networks to help them spend less time searching and more time doing.”

“Say you’re a huge Beyoncé fan and are searching Bing to see what she’s up to, such as the latest on her trip to Cuba,” the spokesperson says. “While searching, you see a post in Bing’s sidebar from a Facebook friend who has an extra ticket to the sold out Beyoncé concert this week. With Bing, you can now comment on your friend’s Facebook post in one step, directly in sidebar, and claim the extra ticket. You’ve gone from simply browsing for news to attending the concert in one simple step. With Bing’s social search you can connect with your friends and engage with your social world to get things done – all in one spot.”

Of course none of this applies to the “Bing it On” challenge, which Microsoft just kicked off a new campaign for. The site, which lets you do side-by-side blind comparisons between Google and Bing results, strips out special features from each search engine, including Bing’s Facebook integration and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Bing continues to be a major partner of Facebook’s, also providing the web search results to Facebook’s Graph Search.

Today, Google made the announcement, but it’s only for Blogger blogs, at least at this point. The feature can be enabled from the Blogger dashboard.

“Now when you’re browsing your blog’s comment threads, you’ll see activity from direct visitors, and from people talking about your content on Google+,” says Google Principal Engineer Yonatan Zunger . “For example, if there’s a public Google+ discussion about one of your blog entries, those comments and replies will also appear on your Blogger blog. This way you can engage with more of your readers, all in one place.”

“Your blog readers will now have the option to comment publicly, or privately to their circles on Google+,” adds Zunger. “And when they’re browsing blog comments, they can view all of them, just the top ones, or only those from the people in their circles.”

Everyone will, of course, only see the comments they have permission to see.

Facebook has had a similar offering for quite some time, and it’s a bit surprising that it’s taken Google this long to offer something, and still only for Blogger.

You can see the feature in action here.

Facebook announced that its comments API now supports “different “views” of the comments on posts through our updated comments API and FQL comment table.”

The first view organizes what Facebook calls “top level comments,” or comments that are not replies. These comments can be ranked based “on the post and the number of top level comments on the post so far.”

The second view is simply called “replies.” Facebook says developers can access replies by “querying for the comments on a comment id.”

The third, and final view, is the comment “stream.” This is what you’re most likely going to see the most of as it combines top level comments and replies into a single stream of data. The “stream” is also organized in chronological order so the newest comments are shown first.

If you’ve already been using the comments API, Facebook says that you should keep the following changes in mind:

If you need more information, check out the comments API documentation. If you want to start using the new API, you can opt in through the July 2013 Breaking Changes under the Advanced Tab of the app dashboard. On July 10, the new comments API will go into effect for everyone. Might as well get used to it now while it’s still voluntary.

Starting today, you can choose to turn on Replies for your page. The new feature changes the way post comments are shown and organized, and it allows users to reply directly to other comments on the post, creating comment threads.

“Today, we’re improving the quality of conversations on Pages with Replies. Reply directly to comments left on your Page and start a conversation thread. The most active and engaging conversations will be shown at the top of your posts,” says Facebook.

The new Replies feature is pretty self-explanatory. Instead of commenting on the post in general, or tagging a user in your comment in order to show that you’re responding directly to them, now you can simply reply to their comment inside the page post. It’s a feature that Facebook has had for a while on their Facebook commenting plugin for sites, and it will no doubt make conversations inside heavily-commented page posts much easier to follow.

The new ranking system that sorts conversations should also help to bring the best comment threads to the top. Facebook says that the new system is based on which conversations are the most “active and engaging,” which most likely means the conversations that contain the most likes and individual replies. We heard last week that the algorithm also takes into account your connections, so you could see a different comment on the top of a post than your friend does – depending on who you know. We’ve reached out to Facebook for more explanation on this and will update you when we hear back.

Starting today, you should be able to opt-in to the new comment structure. Simply go to your page, click “edit page,” and go to “manage permissions.” If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you should see you should see a Replies filter box you can check off to “Allow replies to comments on my Page.” It should be under “Post privacy gating.”

Or, Facebook may prompt you to turn on Replies when you visit your page.

For now, the new replies are opt-in only, and once you opt-in, there’s no opting-out. But starting July 10th, Facebook says they’ll be rolling it out to all pages. If your page has more than 10,000 likes, the new Replies will be turned on automatically.

Now, that feature is about to go live.

Facebook tells TechCrunch that the new threaded comments will rollout on Monday, on an opt-in basis. That period will last a few months, and Facebook will eventually push the new system to everyone in July.

“We think this update will allow for easier management of conversations around posts, which is a better experience for people interacting with Pages and public figure profiles,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Basically, the new comment threads let users reply to individual comments. So instead of one long flow of comments, which can be confusing, you will be able to follow entire conversations based on one original comment.

And the best comments should rise to the top. Facebook’s new algorithm makes sure that you see the comments that are the most engaging – meaning having the most likes and replies. The algorithm also takes into account your connections, so you could see a different comment on the top of a post than your friend does – depending on who you know.

Here’s what the comment threading will look like courtesy of the Huffington Post, who is already using the new system. As you can see, users are now able to comment on other comments. The cream has been pulled to the top, if you will, with the most engaging comment thread appearing at the top:

Not everyone is getting comment threading and the new ranking. It will only be an option for pages with over 10,000 followers, and it won’t be available for personal accounts at all. It’s also not going to be available on mobile – but Facebook hopes to add that functionality soon.

First up, Pinterest has greatly expanded what you can do inside the app regarding your pins. With version 2.2, you can now edit a pin’s description, transfer it to a different pinboard, and even delete the pin entirely.

You also have more control over your comments. Royally screw up a comment? Now you can delete it inside the app. Someone spamming one of your pins? Now you can easily delete any comments made to your own pins as well.

The full list of additions made in v2.2 includes pin editing, comment managing, big fixes, and smoother scrolling.

Last week, Pinterest began testing a brand new web interface that improves navigation and displays more information inside every pin. That test is currently being rolled out to select users.

You can grab the update to the iPhone and iPad app right now.

It’s easy to hear “thin” content, and associate that with content in which there is not a lot of actual content. In other words, you might take this to mean that Google does not like short articles, and would favor a longer article in a case where these two pieces of content are competing for rankings.

Have you seen search ranking success with short content? Let us know in the comments.

The fact is, Google may very well favor the longer, more in depth piece, but that does not mean Google will not value a short article.

In a Google forum thread, a webmaster asked the question: Is short content = thin content?” As Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points out, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, weighed in on the discussion. Here’s what he said:

“Rest assured, Googlebot doesn’t just count words on a page or in an article, even short articles can be very useful & compelling to users. For example, we also crawl and index tweets, which are at most 140 characters long. That said, if you have users who love your site and engage with it regularly, allowing them to share comments on your articles is also a great way to bring additional information onto the page. Sometimes a short article can trigger a longer discussion — and sometimes users are looking for discussions like that in search. That said, one recommendation that I’d like to add is to make sure that your content is really unique (not just rewritten, autogenerated, etc) and of high-quality.” Emphasis added.

Last year, Google shared a set of questions that one could ask himself when assessing the quality of a page or an article. One of these was: “Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?”

Shallow does not mean short. The beginning part of that, which talks about experts and enthusiasts, is likely to have a stronger bearing on how Google views the content. Who you are matters to Google. That’s why they’re looking to push authorship as a stronger signal in the future. Length of a specific piece of content is not necessarily as much of a factor.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a factor. If one piece of content is simply more informative, which it may very well be if it is longer, it might still be the better result, regardless of who you are. There’s still something to be said for a well researched, insightful article. Google is not looking to ignore this kind of content, by any means.

Another of Google’s questions is: “Does the article describe both sides of a story?” Sometimes, it may take more text to answer that with a yes.

One thing about Mueller’s comments that stikes me as interesting is the part about comments. In an article a while back, we looked at the SEO value of comments. Blogger Michael Gray, who turned off his comments several years ago, told us, “It was one of the best decisions I made, and regret not doing it sooner.”

“Does Google take a look at factors like time on site and bounce rate?” he said at the time. “IMHO yes, but you should be looking to increase those with good information, and solid actionable content, not comments. The biggest effect comments have is giving Google a date to show in the SERP’s. This is a huge factor who’s importance can’t be unstated. If I’m looking for how to fix the mouse on my computer, or what dress Angelina Jolie wore to an awards show, having the date show up in the SERP has a lot of value for the user. If I’m looking to learn how to structure a website, the date plays almost no role. The author’s expertise and understanding of information architecture trumps the date.”

It should be noted that Google’s Matt Cutts has reportedly said since then that Google doesn’t use bounce rate.

Interestingly, according to Shoemoney blogger Jeremy Schoemaker, who we also spoke with for that particular article, a Google engineer said at the time that, if anything, comments were diluting the quality score of a page, by possibly diluting overall keyword density. There is also the possibility that the few comments that go through that are clearly spam, could send poor quality signals to Google.

“So he said he did not see a positive to leaving indexable comments on my site,” Schoemaker told us at the time.

But now, here we have Mueller talking up the value of comments.

Of course, it’s not as if this is the first time that Google has sent mixed signals to webmasters and content creators. But on the other hand, you can’t really hold every person at Google, speaking candidly, accountable for knowledge about every aspect of how Google works, especially when it comes to the search algorithm – Google’s secret recipe.

It stands to reason that Google would look at comments in similar fashion to how it views the rest of the content on the page. Some comments are obviously of higher quality than others, even if the spammy ones have been cut out. But if quality is there, Google may just see how such comments could be valuable to users.

Perhaps webmasters should be more stingy with the comments they allow, but then you’re talking about censorship, which is not necessarily a path you want to travel.

Do you think comments on your blog have helped or hurt you in search? Do you believe they’ve had any effect at all? Should Google take them into consideration? Tell us what you think.

Facebook is currently testing a redesign of its commenting system for Page posts that will allow users to reply to specific comments and will also sort them based on an algorithm.

Some pages are now seeing threaded comments under their posts, which give users the ability to create their own little mini-conversations within the larger conversation happening in the entire comments thread. The new format shows a “write a reply” option under specific comments.

Inside Facebook obtained this screencap of the new commenting system:

The new commenting structure also brings a new organizational algorithm to page posts, as Facebook is testing an algorithm that throws the most engaging comments to the top of the thread (whichever ones have the most likes and replies).

Of course, this test brings Facebook comments a little closer to how they appear in the third-party plugin. Facebook-enabled comments on other sites have had threaded comments for some time now, and they are ranked based on the commenters’ relationship (your friends’ comments rise to the top).

Facebook confirmed that the new threaded comments are only being tested on Pages, not posts from individual profiles. I say that comment threads are a long time coming, as it’s incredibly difficult to wade through hundreds of comments in posts from pages with a good number of fans. In theory, allowing comment replies will allow for more coherent discussion of posts and the new ranking algorithm will make sure the most interesting comments are seen by the largest number of people.

Well, not completely.

While emoticons will now show up in comments…

They aren’t yet a part of your actual status updates…

As pointed out by The Next Web, the transition to emoticons in comments has yet to ship to Facebook’s mobile apps (iOS or Android) nor the mobile web. As of now, it’s just a desktop thing. Emoticons made in comments will simply appear textual on mobile.

Back in June, Facebook finally added emoticons to chat. Users has been able to add emoticons to chats for a while, but they had to use special codes. Now, there’s an actual emoticon menu accessible next to the chat box.