10.291.2012 - Bing Social Search Team Makes Search ‘Less Lonely’_for test

As a still-emerging and ever-evolving technology, the field of search has “every hard problem in computing,” Suchter says. It’s massive in scale, has complicated user interface design, low latency, and machine learning, and a lot of factors go into tackling these things. “It’s basically got every challenge except high complexity computer graphics, but with Bing’s rich visuals and animations, we’re getting there too,” Suchter says. “I lucked out getting into social search, this area that is pretty much the big thing going on.” Microsoft News Center (MNC) recently sat down for a conversation with Suchter and two of his team members, Tim Harrington and Paul Yiu, to talk Bing, social search and life in general. When people call Suchter a geek, he unabashedly and happily accepts the compliment. Apart from search, he delights in spending time with his wife, son and daughter, a kindergartner who is learning Mandarin. He also loves building things – bridges, bird houses, human houses – anything that “creates something from nothing.” Harrington, a senior software development engineer, helps develop social search features by day and by night switches gears to a more analog lifestyle – hiking, hanging out with friends, skiing. His wife is a ballet dancer in San Diego, so every third weekend he flies to visit her. Yiu, a program manager, is the crackup of the group – perhaps in part because he learned English primarily by watching American sitcoms. He loves spending time with his wife and child, entertaining friends at home, and has an analogy for just about any situation. MNC: How would you explain Bing’s social search features?