3 Reasons Why Social Media is Killing Search

On January 21, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

The two main drivers of search are, news and finding something you already know exists.

I recently wrote about how in an apples to oranges comparison bitly was challenging Google. One commenter thought I was a loon or a complete idiot for trying to compare the two. In all fairness I may not have explained why the two are worthy of being compared. bitly and Google both have the same purpose: deliver you to a useful website. That’s it. The difference is that one is performed by search queries the other is initiated by a recommendation.

Read/Write Web reports on some coverage from HitWise

Social networking climbed fast this year, and Hitwise says it just peaked over search for a few days during the communication frenzy of Christmas. Take that, Larry and Sergey – Mark and Ev are right behind you.

Social Recommendations

When news breaks we are turning to search engines less and less. We are turning to each other and the real time results of social networks more and more. For breaking news I know that I’ll find a relevant link on Twitter and an outdated news story on Google. I only see one reason this trend will stop (which I’ll get to in my last point).

Better Curating

With so much data out there, curating is going to be a huge trend this year and good curators will be in high demand. The tools we have now for bookmarking (delicious & diigo), favoriting (Google reader and Twitter), listing (Twitter and Listorous), and storing offline (Instapaper and Evernote) are constantly getting better making the need to go to a search engine irrelevant.

Lack of Search Innovation

This is the biggest problem and the thing that Google, Bing and every startup in search is trying to fix. The reason that Bing and Google are tripping over each other to integrate real time data is they are trying to get us all to come to them first when we here of breaking news. And I think that over time it will pay off. With all the noise and rising levels of spam in social media search has an advantage. If they can bring you immediate, real time results, they have a chance since they already have a pretty good handle on filtering spam.

Of course they’ll also get there by making some key acquisitions this year. Who are your bets on the first real time search starups to be acquired?

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Googles Real Time Twitter Search Stream

On December 13, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

On my phone I noticed a comment from David Armano about him heading over to Edelman. I flipped open my laptop and did a quick search when what do I see? Real time Twitter results scrolling by on Google.

Wow, that’s new. So I asked on Twitter if others were seeing this. I got a few replies mentioning that some started to see this feature Friday, others yesterday. Google may have pushed this out Friday or it may be rolling out little by little.

I of course tried to replicate this with other searches. The only way I got this feature was when I searched for people by there Twitter handle. I searched for my Twitter handle and didn’t get a stream but just a few results. I only received standard results when searching for my name. This just added new importance to your Twitter handle.

Then I tried a trending topic: Tiger Woods. That did it. It wasn’t the first result but ended up right above the images results. Also interesting to note is that it’s not just Twitter results but recent blog posts as well.

Right now the results seem to based chronologically, not by any weighting (although I may just not being seeing that). But based on what I saw in Google’s results there was no spam. This is obviously a huge a deal as it’s Google’s response to the perceived threat of Twitter and it shows that Google can do a better job at returning results (if it really is able to weed out the spam and still keep the good stuff).

As this is still an early version, I’m sure we’ll be saying major improvements over time.

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Either Wikipedians are Wicked Fast or Google News is Getting Slower

On June 10, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

News is supposed to be fresh and current. An encyclopedia is a reference for archived information not news. Right? Read\Write Web is reporting that Google News alerts are now turning up Wikipedia entries.
Google News May Add Wikipedia as a Source

When was the last time you used Google News?

Either those Wikipedian’s are wicked fast or Google News keeps getting slower. I remember when Google News used to bring you (what seemed like at the time) near real-time news results. Now thanks to Twitter, FriendFeed and other real-time social sites I don’t even remember the last time I used Google News.

Seems to me that integrating Twitter into Google News as well as Wikipedia would really provide some value. You’d combine traditional news with crowd sourced reference and real-time context. I’m sure there’s a Grease-Monkey script for that.

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Excuse me, News Industry. Why did you matter? I forgot.

On June 4, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Printing press from 1811, photographed in Muni...
Image via Wikipedia

I want you to think back over the last decade. First mainstream media had to take part of their sites online to keep up with these crazy portal pages. Then Google came along and scattered their content to the wind. Bringing them more online readers than they knew how to monitize. That’s because they couldn’t figure out how to sell banner ads and most refused to open their sites for free.

Now think back 5 years ago. Most newspapers have torn down their walls. Google’s “stealing” their content (while sending them hundreds of thousands of visitors.  And they still haven’t figure out how to monitize all that content. But guess who did? Those crazy, angry geeks siting around in their underwear typing HTML into their Web logs. Those geeks were no threat to the journalism industry, even if they were making a few dollars on AdSense (stupid Google).

Fast forward to the start of 2009. The media has now added commenting, sharing widgets and write Digg bait articles. Yet the media industry still can’t monitize that stupid Web traffic and blogs are raising venture capital while newspapers are closing their doors.

Well the newspapers will show them. Tired of playing the bloggers game, they’re taking their content and going home. Rupert is trying to lead a Quixotian quest to rebuild those walls they tore down several years ago.

What do the bloggers do? Up until now they’ve always stayed one step ahead of the traditional media. Not much. They still offer megabytes of great content each day for free. Oh yea and they’re also:

And, uh, wait, I’m forgetting something. Someone is doing something else….

Oh, yeah. Making freaking sweet looking computers! CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype (Screw Google and Garter, watch out Apple.)

crunchpad-4

But hey media, news guys, good luck putting up those walls. Why did we want to see what’s on the other side again? I forgot why you mattered.

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Google and Microsoft Role Reversal

On May 29, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

What a day for tech news yesterday. If you didn’t hear all about Microsoft announcing their new search decision engine, Bing and Google trying to steal their thunder by announcing Wave, welcome back from your coma.

I think both products look amazing and think that both could be game changers but does anyone think its interesting that people are excited about Microsoft search and Google’s office productivity tools? What planet did I just wake up on?

Granted neither of them have made money on their new efforts but both of them are obviously willing to spend a lot of money to steal market share from the others core business.

Whatever the outcome, things just got even more interesting. Imagine 10 years from now if Bing becomes a huge success and is the dominant search engine and Wave does the same. hmmm……

(Disclosure: Microsoft is a client and our team has been working on the launch of Bing but other than knowing some stuff before you guys I don’t know any more than you do now, since most of the work was done before I came on board.)

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There’s nothing wrong with journalism. Their business model is just broken.

On February 15, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

This article got me thinking. WSJ Editor Claims Google Devalues Everything | Techdirt

Journalists seem to be stuck in one of two camps:

  1. Complaining about why their business is ruined, who’s at fault and why they need to go back to the way they were
  2. Documenting with the fascination of watching a long drawn out train wreck the demise of their industry with little to say except “the sky is falling”

We’ve seen small experiments in revolutionizing the business model but nothing substantial. I wonder if they’ll need to hit rock bottom before we see the real innovation.

[update] After more thinking, we have seen some innovation around Web content, aggregation, news sharing but I don’t think this is hitting the real issue. I have a feeling that we’ve yet to see the real answer to journalisms problems. Maybe I’m looking for too much.

Twitter Replies:

A_F @tacanderson Give away a free Kindle to subs – get rid of the “ball & chains” of physical delivery

kevnd @tacanderson you have hit the fundamental problem. First step for journalists – stop taking it personally – get on with a new model.

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