I finally noticed last night that a feature idea I proposed in an email on October 20, 2009 while I was working at Bing.com finally made it to the web on May 17, 2011. I had sent the email below to one of my ‘bosses’ at Bing as a feature idea to add a Facebook icon to the Bing.com homepage, since the background image changed daily. In October 2009, there was no “Like” button that could be put on external websites, so the Facebook icon was all that was available.
I followed up numerous times with more detailed emails and sent them to various ‘bosses’ and leads, as well as pitching it in person whenever I could, but the idea never got anywhere – apparently until someone else came up with the idea :) In any case, I’m proud to be able to pull out old emails to show that I came up with the idea way back when…
Articles from May 2011:
Here’s my original email with the first reply:
From: Prakash Bulusu
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:12 PM
To: Dave Tavres [mailto:a-data@microsoft.com]
Subject: RE: Idea for Bing Search for more clicks…Dave
Interesting idea. I will forward to some people. Home page is premium real estate so people usually very tight on what goes there.
From: Dave Tavres [mailto:a-data@microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 6:04 PM
To: Prakash Bulusu
Subject: Idea for Bing Search for more clicks…
Importance: LowSince one of the features of Bing Search is the changing daily background (which I’m sure people enjoy), create a small Facebook link icon, where users can click it and post it to their Facebook page.
1.jpg – Add a Facebook icon to the bottom right corner.
2.jpg – When a user clicks it, a Facebook “Post to Profile” window opens.
3.jpg – User makes a comment (or doesn’t) and hits the “Share” button, and the link/image is posted to their Facebook page.
4.jpg – The icon is very unobtrusive, but could be very popular.
See images below.
