They really dont need facebook.

Seb

Totally agreed Erick. The key issue here is trust in the information source. Unfortunately too many systems still only allow some global notion of trust to be applied to a particular person within one’s social network, rather than allowing this trust relationship to be topic-specific and task/context-dependent.

My research has shown that when seeking information and recommendations by word of mouth, people use relatively complex and fine-grained mechanisms when deciding whether or not to trust different members of their social network with respect to that particular information need. Trust is not some unified notion, but instead breaks down into aspects such as the expertise, experience and impartiality of the source, and the affinity and track record that exists between the two parties. I also found that the relative emphasis placed on these different factors varies according to the nature of the task and information need, such as how critical and subjective it is.

Any system that seeks to exploit social search at any scale will need to employ exactly these kind of factors in developing their ranking algorithms, if they hope to prevent information overload. If you’re interested in reading more there is more detail in my thesis at http://tomheath...com/thesis/html or just give me a shout.

Cheers, Tom.

Why would Microsoft let the purchase go through? That’s right they wouldn’t.

Googles best angle is to be developing the connector between SN sites and their search. That is what they are working on, and what they will ultimately accomplish.

I also agree with the poster who noted that in reality only about 10% of his “friends” [read social network] have any real value to him on a regular basis. Let’s take LinkedIn for instance. i have about 230 connections. I value them, but most of them are connections for a specific reason. Only about 10% of these people are really inside my first ring of friends. Facebook is the same (I am NOT an FB user), and this has been pointed out for years about SN sites, only about 10% of the connections are “real” connections.

So there I go searching Florence and get some guy who I met for 15 minutes at a seminar and is now “linkedIn” to me. What value do i put in his opinion or experience. For something as random as that I can just read “user reviews”.

I do think that one day (in about 5 years) there will be a much deeper connection between search and the social experience. But for now its just the early adopters who are gaga for this….frankly most people out there don’t care, they are perfectly happy with how things work now.