One of the dozens of announcements being made today at the Bing Search Summit is the integration of EveryScape interior business photography into local profile pages on Bing. EveryScape is already part of the Bing Map Apps, which are cool but little utilized. That may change after today.
Images on the local profile page will invite users to “step inside” the business (courtesy of EveryScape):
Below the sentiment “scorecard” is where the EveryScape integration occurs (but also perhaps in the upper left):
EveryScape is set to announce a wide range of reseller partners, with reach into the SMB market, which are collecting the imagery. It’s then being redistributed to Bing and later elsewhere via EveryScape. All the images are ads of a sort; EveryScape changes SMBs for the interior photography and presumably so do the reseller partners (who may also bundle it into a package).
EveryScape CEO Jim Schoonmaker and I have spoken a few times now about the “lift” that interior photography provides to these local businesses. He believes that it gives consumers confidence to discover new businesses they might not otherwise choose. I also asked him about the difference between EveryScape imagery and video, which presumably overlap.
Schoonmaker made the point that video viewing typically occurs late in the decision-making or research process, while EveryScape imagery (because it’s lighter weight) engages consumers earlier in the purchase process when they’re still broadly open to influence. The ultimate answer to how consumers interact with these media is an “empirical question.” But that’s how Schoonmaker distinguished the two types.
Google is doing something similar with interior photography on Places Pages (and so is YPG in Canada and Yell in the UK). I just discovered (via hearsay) that the Google photography is no longer free, however, though it was at launch. I haven’t confirmed this with Google.
The addition of EveryScape interior photography (now in three cities, expanding to more later) supports the range of visual and mapping tools that Bing provides. I hadn’t been to Bing profile pages in some time and I poked around the other day after talking to Schoonmaker. I was surprised at how good they look now.
Here are a couple of images of the EveryScapes integration now that it’s live:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
[...] discussing general improvements in local and mapping and references EveryScape deal and integration into Bing local profile pages. Now discussing mobile and repeating a number of stats that have been [...]
December 15th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling, Samantha McGarry, shoppetweets, SMBinfo, UBLorg and others. UBLorg said: Great Local Post! EveryScape Integrated into Local Pages on Bing http://ow.ly/1at61S [...]