I have been a huge proponent of Bing — amazing since I will eternally despise Microsoft for inflicting impossible inelegant kloogy software on all us worker bees. But Bing is the one thing Microsoft has done right. It is the National Geographic of the 21st century. Breathtaking in both aesthetics and usefulness. Useful that is if you use it to buy plane tickets (love that buy-o-meter!) or shop for the lowest prices.

Its major failing has been search. Bing’s search simply has not been as granular as Google’s.  Today’s new announcement will help: Bing will start including status updates from Facebook. Even though most FB updates are drivel, many retailers are now actively using FB for promotions so this will help shoppers for one, but it will also fill out the Bing search experience with more rich media content among other things.

It is high time that Google had a tough competitor and if Bing stays on top of the improvements small advertisers may see some relief. Click inflation, the relenting up tick in Google CPCs is absolutely killing small businesses and businesses selling products at lower price points. If Bing becomes a contender in search we will see Google blink and start to offer more promotions to small advertisers. I believe that Google loyalty is eroding and I predict the tipping point for Google is well inside five years. FB has already surpassed it. And Google’s chronic lack of positive user experience (it should not take 200,000 answers for one stupid question) has trained users to go elsewhere: Wikipedia, Amazon…and Bing.

I have seen major advertising success on Facebook and equally terrifying failures. I recommend Facebook advertising to my clients ONLY as a test. If it hits, great, if not RUN.  And then there is the pesky question of Facebook provided analytics. We have seen them change up and down for the same time period, leading us to believe that they are completely unreliable.

But beyond businesses buying Facebook ads, there is the question of whether or not to participate in social activity on Facebook: Where is the measurable ROI?  A company can sink time and money and time and money and eventually maybe something happens, but no one is ever really sure. Gee, sounds familiar doesn’t it? We’re back to the good old days of Public Relations!

But in this modern age of being able to “measure everything” it is time for Facebook to cough up some basic information that would allow businesses to make educated judgments as to whether to spend time and money with the Facebook product. Here is my wish list:

1. Percentage of FB users who are actually active at anyone time
2. Percentage of FB users who are actually active: log on at least once a week
3. Levels of engagement: How many users are adding at least 10 new friends a week How many users are posting more than once a week? more than twice a week? daily? multiple times a day?
4. Levels of engagement by demographic: Here is where it gets down and dirty: who is doing what when? what markets are REALLY and TRULY using Facebook.

These are simple questions for that Facebook can easily provide data. Not detailed personal data, but meta data – in the same way that print publishing historically provided circulation data.

This is not too much to ask.