Microsoft is getting more involved with the social sector, powering instant personalization with Bing.  Microsoft’s Bing has been powering Facebook search for a little while now, but it was primarily focused around web results.  Relating that back to the social graph is really what this partnership is all about, and it appears to be an extension of the social search results from Facebook that Bing already incorporated into its search.

This makes for the fifth instant personalization round Facebook has delved into, as the company is hand-picking partners for this level of profile integration.  Other partners include Rotten Tomatoes and Yelp.

With the new integration, Facebook users can search for people on Bing, and will be able to see friends and their friends, within their search results.  Additionally, you’ll be able to see friends’ Likes along with these search results.  This is all public profile information, but it’s taking pieces of it outside of Facebook and into Bing search results.

Head over to Bing while logged into Facebook, and you’ll see an instant personalization notification bar.  This is where you’ll find your search options related to Facebook-integrated search results.  It’s an external way to continually interact with your social graph, receiving Facebook information (recommendations, etc.) even when you’re not on the site.

There are a number of privacy issues that this raises, and it’s a question of how socially shared data should be incorporated into third party apps.  How should your Likes be shared across the web, and where should those be accessed by your friends.  Facebook has made it clear that users can set their Likes to private from their account settings, and these will not be accessible for instant personalization.

As Microsoft partners with the likes of Facebook in order to beef up its social search, such combined efforts are taking aim at Google.  As it stands, Google’s weak point is still the social incorporation of search, but they may have a more comfortable process towards reaching this “social search” ideal of the future.  We’ll have to see how users respond to this type of information being included in a given Bing query, and if this actually the best way to combine social and search components.

One area this could be pretty influential is mobile, as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will be heavily reliant on Bing, and Facebook has big aims for the mobile realm as well.  Making search results socially relevant is something a lot of people want, and finding the best route towards that is going to be one filled with obstacles.