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Posts tagged Social Search
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?
Social Media, Weak Ties and Trust Agents
Jul 22nd
There is something we can do with Facebook and Twitter and that we cannot really do so easily through traditional means of communication. And that thing is to connect with people without investing too much time in the relationship. Take the example of Twitter. A user can follow another user with very little costs besides spending a few minutes finding that user through Twitter’s search functionality. The good thing with Twitter is that information can flow from the friend to the follower for as little time investment as a mouse-click. These type of connections are weak ties: besides that Twitter connection between both parties, there is little that brings them together.
Because they don’t require so much time and effort, weak ties are not those ties we trust most. Long-time friends and family members are usually those we trust and rely on in our life. These are strong ties and are build through the years. However, weak ties have something to offer that strong ties cannot offer: diversity. Since we hang out so much with our close friends and family members, we end-up influencing each other. Our perception of the world and life becomes very dependent on how our strong ties perceive things. In one word, spending too much time with the same people is bad for out brain!
This is exactly where social media picks things up. By allowing us to connect with people without having to engage in costly relationships, we can find out about new things for very little effort. We end up with a better understanding of the world by seeing things from fresh perspectives.
An implication of this conception of social media is that trust agents are bad for our health. Trust agents are those high profile social media users such as top bloggers, gurus, celebrities, etc. Sticking too much to what these people say will have the same effect of sticking only with close friends and family members: we will be exposed to only one way of seeing things. Trust agents should be avoided and social media should be a tool for exploration.
The Social Search Engine
Jan 26th
In the war search engines are leading against social media, it all looks like the latter is winning. Real-time trends are so important that Bing has incorporated them into its search suggestions. Since Google is pretty much doing the same, then it isn’t just a way for one engine to compete against another. It is more a technology competing against another.
Apparent contradiction
My view is that the social media is a disruptive alternative to search engines. There is something that social media does that search engines cannot do but for which both are competing: the transfer of knowledge. Search engines are about retrieving information and knowledge is transferred once the person has 1) found the right keyword, 2) found useful webpage and 3) read and understood the webpage. Social media on the other hand transfers knowledge from one user to another as they interact. Therefore, social media has nothing else to offer that the possibility for people to interact. As a result, indexing the content of social media seems at first sight to be useless.
Why this move from software giants?
What Microsoft and Google are trying to do is take advantage of the fact that social media generate content to have bigger indexes. Don’t forget, search engines without websites to index are like a social network without users. What they hope by indexing social networks is to keep trace of a conversation between two users and hope to extract information that can later be useful to others who would be in the same ‘cognitive state’ than those who initially had that conversation.
The Perversions of Social Media
Dec 17th
I guess everyone should know about the London escort service using Google Maps Business Listings to promote its service. This is just another example of how social media is used as a tool for promotion and that regulations should be there to protect the younger audience from harmful content. Of course, this is a blatant example, where the necessity of regulations is obvious, but this general concept is still true for all types of advertisings.
I guess everyone should know about the London escort service using Google Maps Business Listings to promote its service. This is just another example of how social media is used as a tool for promotion and that regulations should be there to protect the younger audience from harmful content. Of course, this is a blatant example, where the necessity of regulations is obvious, but this general concept is still true for all types of advertisings.
How to get rid of spam?
Google will never be able to recognize all the black-hat techniques that are used out there. Even if it does, new tricks will come up and some sort of spam will always will make it to the first page somewhere. As a result, the user will always be subject to a certain amount of spam no matter what. It is up to him to be able to recognize spam, which introduces the concept of user regulated search.
User-filtered search results
Basically, this means that the user will clean the spam out of the search results. It is as if all Google users were paid to filter out all those bad results coming out of the bot’s index. Of course Google is not going to pay anybody since it is not charging anybody for search results. In this regard, Google is going to become a social search engine, that is one that promotes results according to social appreciation of a page. Well, there is already a website for this: Digg.