Slashdot Mirror
How Social Networks May Kill Search as We Know It
mattnyc99 writes "Recently we discussed a startup that's blending social networking with traditional Web search. But now high geek Glenn Derene takes it one step further, pronouncing that our increasingly traceable online footprints will transform Google's dominant algorithm and open up the world of Web search for the 21st century. Speaking to a tuned-in VC guy and scoring a rare interview with Google's VP of search, Derene may have some meat behind his newly-coined term: 'faceboogle.' From the article: 'As we each carve out our individual niche on the Web, the logic of search may well flip inside out. Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships, shopping habits and surfing addictions, it's conceivable that the information could attempt to find us — the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way.'"
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Not sure how google will outlive the threat from human-tagged information, both from social networks and Wiki's.
Ever notice Wiki is in the top three hits to EVERY SEARCH in Google?
"the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way.'"
You push it! You push it real good!
All joking aside, I have serious doubts that push media could account for my eclectic tastes. My friends can't even figure me out, how is a stupid computer going to?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
faceboogle!
But seriously I think most of us are thinking the same sentiment.
I literally spit out a mouthful of Diet Coke upon reading that. "Faceboogle" replaces "blogmarklet" as The Worst New Word Ever. (Although it's still less annoying than "__? Not so much.)
How does one get to become "high geek", anyway?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The Faceboogle concept assumes that I want to search just for those things which already match my existing online footprint.
When I search, however, it's usually because I want to find information on something NEW.
Can it possibly be true that most searching is just for the same old topics--teenagers looking for the latest gossip on their favorite celebrity? Perhaps. But that sure doesn't describe how I--and most of the folks I know--use search.
This will never happen. For myself and most people I know, the internet is about acquiring information about things we aren't familiar with, not about rehashing information which we already know. Whether that information be used for personal enjoyment - learning something new for the sake of learning something new - or for personal research, like say looking up probable diseases you may have based on symptoms. For anything like this, social networking information will never provide you with what you need.
The only realm where such a thing were to exist is in adolescents. Your friend discovered an new Naruto website with awesome backgrounds and your interest in Naruto, which is listed in your profile, allows the network to make the connection.
Let's refine this a bit. *Perhaps* there is a use for boolg'ling web search content toward consumer taste. But it's likely that not many of my friends are researching topics similar to my own.
So, social tags would be relevant only for - let's pretend, here, c'mon - consumer taste. Everything else - like scholarly research, etc - I'm afraid has to be done the hard, old way - by knowing how and where to search.
--Dave
Here you go: In Soviet Russia, faceboogles you.
For the record, "faceboogle" sounds like something that happens at the end of a pr0n film.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Anyone interested in changing themselves for the better, anyone wanna make a happier life?
Remember how every time you tried something new in H.S. or somewhere your peer group push you back into the mold of you they thought was 'the real you'? Ever have that happen in life? With parents? With all your long-term relationships?
Now the web will do the same thing
HELLO TO THE STATIC PERSONALITY. We don't change, nope never happens. You just refine your search algorithm and help us figure out who we are by marketing 'content' at us. Yeah.
IMO, Phucked.
The use of "social networking" data for search has been discussed before in the search technology community, where it's not well thought of. "Inertia" in search, where your search history affects your later results, turns out to be a pain. Search becomes nonrepeatable, both for the individual and for others. This adds more hassle than the gain provided by "inertia".
Reading both the article and the interview with the Google VP, it's clear that the article exaggerates Google's interest in this area.
Social networking data is taken seriously on the advertising side, where using social networking data for ad selection is already being done by Myspace and their ilk. Amazon and Netflix already have rather good systems for deciding what to recommend to their customers. That's where this really works, where the seller has a big product selection and the user is already prepped to buy something. Myspace isn't doing as well, but then, as we've pointed out before, their advertisers are mostly bottom feeders. Ad rates on Myspace are very low, and it shows.
A key question is who controls the use of the social networking data for ad selection. Not the user, of course; the disagreement is between the social networking sites and the search engines. Look for a battle in that area, perhaps followed by mergers.
Anybody else remember the creative term "Veronica" search
Yep, guess that makes you old. Veronica is obviously a "backronym" (the phrase behind it was invented to afterwards to match the word). There is the WWW now, which essentially replaced Gopher space, but before that the 'net was all about FTP. To seach public FTP archives you used "Archive Search", which was contracted to the nickname "Archie". Then Gopher came out which added structure to the big pile of archives, and a Gopher search was made for it. Since it was a search utility "companion" to Archie it was named Veronica (as in the comic book characters).
Later a localhost-only, optimised search utility for a Gopher host was made called....Jughead (because it was the "lazy friend" of Archie and Veronica).
This article reminds me of theories about the 'net eventually becoming sentient...with this big trail of info crumbs we might find our friends Archie, Veronica and Jughead will turn into stalkers...
Sounds like a term used in porn to me....
Monstar L
Not sure how google will outlive the threat from human-tagged information, both from social networks and Wiki's.
Ever notice Wiki is in the top three hits to EVERY SEARCH in Google?
Did you ever notice you are on Google, and not the Wiki search page, when you make that observation?
Obviously there's a reason. Wiki's (esp. Wkipedia which I'm sure is what you were really referring to) are great resources but are certainly not the only link I look at in search results - even if they are the top hits in many searches.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't use Facebook, MySpace, or any of those social sites precisely because of the quality of the content there and the caliber of the people who use them. There's nothing on those sites that I look for, and I routinely ignore search results with social networking site results because of my experience with the crappy quality of information there: think Nextag and product searches.
Quotes like "Search has always been about people" show a fundamental ignorance of how most people over the age of 25 use search, and whatever accuracy it may contain is a damning indicator of the underachievement of those for whom it is true.
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Faceboogle is bad but the alternates are even worse. What if people used Goofaced? Think of how mad you would be if you found out someone Goofaced you.
Facebook alone is enough to put me in a rage. But I guess I must grudgingly accept the fact that I am apparently one of only four computer-literate people left in the English speaking world who doesn't live and die by their facebook page. Ridiculous. My unborn children will hate me for sure.
A-Bomb
Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships...
Speak for yourself, writer person. I don't use "social networking." I don't care what my friends had for lunch, and I don't want my ex to know who my next ex is going to be by virtually sitting them down next to each other. That's bananas.
I really should write a form letter to politely decline Plaxo, LinkedIn, Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, etc. invitations that well intentioned people keep sending me.
I even avoid IM, because hey, why do I want to let 20 people know I am at the computer RIGHT NOW? SOMEONE always wants to talk. And if I spend most of my time pretending to be away or invisible, then IM has become a burden and not a help to me.
Old fashioned methods of communication like email still work great for me. I do not want to be transparent. If you do, you mystify me.
facebooger, gooface, it still sounds like someone sneezed w/o a kleenex handy.
Kevin Smith on Prince
If this is the case, and people start being more cautious again about identifying themselves in meatspace on the social networks, this search trend might shrivel. On the other hand, this increased search capability of the social networks might help the scenario I eluded to above to be realized fairly quickly, since search for a person's background is made easier by those doing background checks.
Again...maybe it is my older age on this, but, ever since I've had my identity stolen twice, I've really started thinking Python got it right about the "Importance of not being seen".
I like to post on the net quite a bit, and while I know with some effort, I could be tracked even through here, but, I try to always use pseudonyms when posting, and often have used nym accounts and mail2news type services to stay anonymous even more on USENET posts. I know someone can find stuff about me, but, it would take more effort than just a quick search on a myspace 'search' like the article is mentioning....where with a simple real meatspace name, you can find out that a person like smoking grass, doing nude beer bongs (with pictures), and is open minded about the whole gerbil/Gere thing. If it comes between that person, and someone who pretty much makes it less than trivial to searched....who do you think will get the job?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And even though you're rarely searching for something you've seen before, it's possible that knowledge of what you have seen before might still be used to put your searches into a better context.
If you're a parent planning to remodel your daughter's bathroom, for example: even though this may be the first time you've ever searched for fixtures with gender-specific decorations for children, a search engine that knows a bit about your demographics could probably give MUCH better results when you type in "tub girl".
This guy is obviously high.
I would argue that google won in the ad industry by not pushing. Whilst all its competitors continue to cram ads on their top page and infultrate their own search results, google has done its best to stay out of the way, and to push oh so slightly. Google may be pushing ads on their search results, but they do their best to push what is pulled, keep it to the side, and not spam you or get in your way.
Google's success has everything to do with them recognizing the internet is a pull medium.
With all of the different avenues for expression, most of us are leaving vast imprints of ourselves on the web. For me, I have comments, photos, and relationships expressed on: Slashdot, TheDailyWTF, Digg, Amazon, Facebook, Friendster, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo Answers, Blogger, Match, Usenet boards, Battlenet, my personal web pages, and much more. Some of those are current but many are old and not an accurate reflection of my current self.
For now most of those facets of my personality are separate. Someone reading this post is unlikely to link this personality to my Flickr photos or old Usenet postings. But someday a search engine like Google will figure out which personas are linked to me, even if I used different usernames and email addresses for each one. There are enough hints in the form of interests, writing style, and secondary links to tie them together. And there are likely archives of all those web postings going back to the dawn of the web.
So now I am tending to filter what I say in any forum, knowing that someday a prospective employer, landlord, creditor, lawyer, or mate will read it. The age of freedom and anonymity online has ended. The only hope is that those seeing our former selves will learn to accept our fluidity and diversity of behavior.
I don't agree, though I wish I could.
The desire for privacy is fading fast. Those of us over the age of 25 still care about it for the most part, but the youngest generation doesn't. This can be clearly seen in their wholehearted adoption of myspace and facebook, putting all the intimate details of their personal lives on the web for anyone to see. I predict that, within 30 years, the whole notion of "privacy" as a right will be completely forgotten, simply because the younger generations aren't interested in it.
On the one hand, you are completely right. I have seen potential job candidates judged on the cleavage in their Facebook photos--and this is all without accessing the actual page.
But you don't have to put anything questionable on your page. There's nothing inherent in myspace etc that you couldn't put on your homepage. So I think some people will lose jobs over it but they will get jobs eventually and learn their lesson.
Much scarier is what corporations and governments may want to do with that info. Facebook scares the friendliness out of me and I'm not too pleased that Murdoch owns Myspace. The same people that don't want their names on the PETA mailing list are happy to post pics of themselves protesting free trade.
"Faceboogle" is a classic example of the phenomenon I call "world wide web portmanteau." That name is a bit long; for short, I've coined a new term, "wwwortmanteau."
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here again Thursday night.
Haven't you ever wondered what happened to your best friend from Elementary school? Your favorite acquaintances from college? It's not about chat. It is about keeping a link to people that would otherwise get left behind. As (at least in the U.S.) society becomes more mobile there is a strong desire to keep those ties. There's a lot of lonely people out there who treasure reading the blogs, hearing the music, and looking at pictures of former in-the-flesh friends.
"who do you think will get the job"
;).
;) ).
;).
Depends on which company they are applying to and probably what else they have online ( OSS projects with great code etc those are all also part of the "plumage").
While it means that those people have a higher chance of not being hired by "holier than thou" companies, they probably won't be a good fit in those companies anyway - might not have as much fun in those companies too
A fun company to join wouldn't care if prospective employees have photos of themself drunk wearing a silly party hat scattered amongst the social networks.
Nude beer bongs, smoking grass? I'm sure there are many bosses who have done that stuff before, and didn't think it was that bad. People hire people who are like them.
I've never done all of that, but I don't see that stuff as a huge problem, unless that person comes in smelling of grass/alcohol and looking doped/drunk then that's a very bad sign (you can always call up a bit earlier and say you can't make it for the appointment
It will hurt them if the job market is really tight, but otherwise, I don't think it's as bad as people think. Furthermore when these younger generation become CEOs and HR people, a fair number of them are probably going to think it's normal to have such pics, and might even view negatively/with suspicion people who don't let it all hang out
Now if there's evidence of them doing something vicious or malicious, in a manner where the context is hard to deny, then I think companies should think twice (esp if the culprit is the one posting it on his/her own page, unless maybe it's as an apology or something, but still...). It's kind of scary to have someone who might "snap" and bash colleagues/employees/staff, or do that just for amusement, and those traits will probably show up in other areas of their worklife.
I personally don't care if people link my posts with me. Ever since I've post stuff on the internet (more then a decade ago), I have assumed what I post can and will be linked to me. Google has thousands of hits of my posts etc.
Wouldn't you like to work with someone who was smart, not too lazy, competent AND _fun_? Maybe you can't have too many clowns around, but heck even a staid but wise HR dept might hire a "company clown" or two to brighten things up.
I think you are thinking of myspoogle.