Get Noticed
Posts tagged Google
Knowledge, Search Engines and Social Media
Aug 3rd
It is often said that we live in a knowledge economy. In such a context, it is only natural that information technology receives great attention as a set of tools that can lead to economic development. Search engines, for instance have become part of our daily lives. Google, with sales slightly above $20 billion a year, is worth around $150 billion in terms of total stock shares, while Wal-Mart – the biggest company on the planet – is only worth around $190 billion with $400 billion sales. It appears that financial analysts are convinced that information is more valuable than everyday things!
Search engines are so valuable, not because they contain information, but because they speed-up the search for relevant information. This is because an important distinction must be made between knowledge and information. Knowledge is a state of mind that one reaches after performing a certain task. When someone used a hammer, for instance, that person acquires knowledge about how to use a hammer. It is this change that happens in his mind that constitutes knowledge. Now, if that person sits down and writes a procedure about using a hammer, that would be information. This information about how to use a hammer is in no way knowledge about using a hammer. In fact, someone who would read that written procedure would not necessarily know how to use a hammer unless he actually uses a hammer, and therefore acquires his own knowledge about using a hammer.
My point here is that using a search engine does not directly contribute to the economic development of a country in the context of knowledge economy. It only helps in not missing a piece of information that could be useful in guiding our actions and leading to new knowledge. Let’s say someone wants to create a Facebook application. Searching for “how to create Facebook Application” on Google will not give the knowledge necessary to build a Facebook application. It will only lead to a couple of web pages that could contain information about how to build one. The searcher will have to read and select the page that is appropriate for what he wants to build and go on building the Facebook app by following the procedures. Since these procedures never complete enough to get the job done, the searcher will have to find some things out on his own and it is this whole process of contextualizing and sense making of the information that is found from the web page that leads to knowledge about building a Facebook app. Well, ‘thats obvious’ you will say, but this obvious thing can lead to something important.
If a web page exist out there and describes a procedure on how to build a Facebook app, it is because someone out there knows how to build Facebook apps. Therefore, reading that web page is not the only way to have access to information about building Facebook apps. Talking to that guy who created the Facebook app is another option, and it could lead to better learning experience for the searcher. Now, how can the searcher talk to that guy if he doesn’t know him? Answer: Social media!
Social media is not just one way of keeping in touch with friends and have a laugh. It is also another way of looking for the right source of information. Only, the difference here is that social media is interactive because we’re not dealing with a website but a person. Therefore, there is a whole new set of things we can do using social media that we couldn’t have done with search engines.For instance, we don’t have to find the right person by searching for a couple of keywords. We can ask a friend who can ask a friend and eventually get connected to the right person with the knowledge we’re looking for. The advantage here is that if we’re ignorant on a subject to the point that we don’t even know the keywords to look for, then it is only by interacting with someone else who will know a little more that we can get to the right source of knowledge.
The big question is, will social media become bigger than search engines?
Facebook Soon Number One?
Jan 21st
Facebook is number two on Alexa since september 2009
Facebook has been world’s second most visited website for more than 5 months now. Taking into account that Google is the default page for most browsers, it is pretty much an unavoidable website. Whether they want to admit it or not, Google and Facebook are in competition for at least one thing: traffic. My view is that they are competing for more than just that. I believe Google and Facebook are two different ways of offering a platform for transmitting knowledge. However, the interactive nature of Facebook place it in a stronger position to fulfill this need. In this regard, using Facebook to get knowledge from our network is going to slowly replace what we used to obtain from Google.
There is another space where Facebook can take pieces of traffic away from Google and that’s in browsers default page. This trends is already happening for hardcore Facebook users. With people increasingly spending time on Facebook, this trend will only be on the rise. Facebook was already number one website for 2009 Christmas where people spend a lot of time sending greetings. I also believe this is not a glitch but more a trend towards Facebook dominating traffic on the Internet.
If the Reliable Search Result is Wikipedia, Then Why use Google?
Nov 2nd
It’s been a while now that most of the searches that I perform on Google give Wikipedia in the top five results. Since Google’s search results are infested with SEOed promotional pages, I have built the reflex of clicking on Wikipedia automatically. This is is mainly because I trust Wikipedia for the quality of its content. Of course, this is just another way of saying that Wikipedia is a useful website and that Google is not the solution to everything! But then I had to ask myself why I was using Google when I land on Wikipedia most of the time? I should be searching for stuff on Wikipedia and not Google.
Google, most will argue is good at crawling content an associating it with keywords. In other words, performing a search through Wikipedia will give less relevant results than performing the same search on Google with the option of limiting search scope to Wikipedia. My opinion is that this argument would be true if nobody used SEO techniques to push for promotional content on Google. Let me clarify my position by the following example.
Let’s say I’m searching for something and that The best page for that thing is a Wikipedia page. Let’s also assume that this thing is searchable with coveted keyword which is in heavy SEO attack. Therefore, hordes of SEO professionals are fighting for the keyword by creating tweaked content and tons of backlinks to their pages. Chances are that the Wikipedia page will not appear in the top results, which will make Google’s search algorithm’s edge less relevant and Wikipedia’s weaker search algorithm more efficient!
While this example might seem trivial to many, it has a very important meaning: social media can be a very good source of information if it produces information under a process that controls quality. Wikipedia has such a process and it’s because of this process that I have the reflex of looking at Wikipedia web pages every time they show up in search results. My conclusion is that all those who feel like Google is being taken over by a new kind of spam should turn to sites like Wikipedia if they are looking for accurate and less biased information. The corollary to this view is that everyone should get involved in the information production process. As famously said by Eric S. Raymond, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
Which One is Your Favorite Search Engine: Google or Facebook?
Oct 26th
Facebook gets almost as much pageviews as Google, making it more than just a space where you stay in touch with friends. If you are willing to admit that user generated content is the thing of the future, then you should admit that there might be a lot of valuable content on Facebook. A lot of people are aware of this as close to 20 percent of searches are performed on social media. Google has recognized the importance of social media as it announced social search today. This new feature is complementing the Twitter and real-time search markets that Google is trying to dominate. Being the market leader, the search engine giant is betting on every slot of the emerging trends in search.
Social media is so important that most companies have built a Facebook page where they can announce and do promotional stuff. After all, the concepts of staying in touch and getting feedback from customers and creating brand awareness fit too well with social media. I don’t know if you agree, but I think that the search engine market is dead already; at least until a firm comes with a radically new way of analyzing, organizing and presenting data. Most of the benefits that firms can get out of SEO are already well documented and established. Top keywords have been conquered long time ago and it is unlikely that page rankings change drastically in the future.
Social media optimization on the other hand still has a lot to offer because of its interactive nature. Inbound marketing simply goes to another level. With social media, marketing is not just about doing the necessary to get found by customers. It is more about getting to know the customers by conversing with them. Because of its nature, I believe that Facebook and social media in general have a good chance of being an alternative platform for search. The question is: if people are looking so much for information on Facebook, why should they be using Google?
The Future of Google Wave: Become a Platform for Real-Time Advertising
Oct 5th
In a sense, Google is already a big platform for advertising. The free search is there because there is revenue behind advertising. The combination of Google’s market share, great search algorithms and complementing applications make it unmatched interactive advertising agency. Today, Google is more than anything, an advertising agency.
With the growth of social media as popular search platform that could take pieces of the search, Google started a campaign to compete on the real-time search market against players like Facebook, Twitter and even Youtube.
Now, to come to our initial subject that is Google Wave, lets think of social media a platform that lets people communicate and collaborate in different ways. In this sense, chatting is a form of social media. Google Wave is built to make current chatting platforms be more like face to face conversation. From the point of view of an advertising agency like Google, the fact that people will use words to communicate with each other is an offers an opportunity to sell a byproduct: real-time advertising.
Of course, the real challenge is to target advertising as the user is typing stuff. But Google already has something similar in Gmail when it directs advertising to users based on email content. Now, this thing has to be tweaked to go faster.
Google Fighting War on Real-Time Search Front: Hot Trends Takes on Twitter
Sep 29th
Most analysts agree that we are experiencing great moments in the IT industry and especially in the search engine market. I believe there are two main reasons for this:
- There is no real monopoly in the search engine market
- Social media has emerged as a platform for information exchange, i.e. there is competition at many levels
If we look at social media through the resource-based theory of knowledge, we would say that people in a network are holder of knowledge and that they exchange knowledge by communicating through the social media’s interface. This is precisely a level at which search engines compete with social media. Contrary to search engines that are centralizing entities that keeps track of all the knowledge available on the Interent and help its users in finding the things of interest, social media provides information in a dynamic and decentralized way.
Because of this dynamic configuration, information trendiness is an intrinsic feature of social media. Trending information is one that is exchanged by an important percentage of the social network or in simple words, something that a lot of people talk about. In a world in constant change, having access to this characteristic of a piece of information is indeed very vital. Indeed, Twitter is basically a trending subject provider and has known tremendous growth. Because of the importance of this feature, Google adapts its know-how about information aggregation to the dynamic nature of social media. The little baby is called Google Hot Trends.
Google Places Page is no Exception: Competition is Always Good News for Consumers
Sep 26th
I am very interest by the concept of network externalities as well as the lockin (or bandwagon effect) phenomenon. Every time, I see a market leader be forced to bring change and innovate in the face of competition, I cannot do anything else than be amazed by the accuracy of these concepts. After all, big players do not need to innovate just to please there customers, it is always the market situation (hence network externalities) that force them to do so.
Lately, I came across Google new thing: Google Places. Well this is not really a new thing. First, info about a place was available from Google Map even before. Also, Bing and Yahoo had something similar already, so we can’t say that it’s Google’s invention.
Now, to explain the parallel with the network externalities theory, I’ll go with a simple question that came to my mind: why this good feature wasn’t available before? I call this a good feature because when it come to map-based local search, it is extremely difficult to deliver complete and thorough information about a place on the same page as the map. In fact current standards suggest that grids or lists are the most usable and convenient ways of providing information. Having information cohabit with map is indeed a real challenge, one that could require such drastic change in usability principles that it could be unusable because too new. The dedicated place page is thus a must and unavoidable feature of map-based local search if one wants to reach for more usability.
My opinion is that Bing’s local search threat forced Google to go faster in delivering this feature. Many analysts argue that local search is the (or one of the) big things to come (or already there). With the spectacular gains that Bing has made on the search engine market, Google must respond by having cutting edge technology that is a necessity of the day.
Now what’s the result of all this for the consumer: better search results and more usable solutions. This is so because the big players are forced to compete with each other and that none of them has a big advantage over the other. Also, with the fast pace with which technology is evolving combined with the widespread adoption of the Internet, things could get ugly fast if one stays behind. Indeed, it could very well mean death.