The Power Of Social(ized) Search

Notes

We are on a the road to a major conversion of different technologies, a merger of disparate data points into a singular intelligence previously unknown (yeah, sounds preposterous, I know). And Google is (yet again) right in the middle of it. I won’t be fear mongering about a Skynet entity, or any of the privacy issues related to this. It is the nature of progress that technology disrupts people’s lives. People will adapt, and life evolves.

Google already knows all there is to know. But knowledge is only as powerful as the relationships you can make between facts. Recently Google started to add related results to its search results list. For example, you might look for Copernicus, and it dutifully lists all facts it can find about Copernicus. But Google also knows “who” Copernicus is, and it shows me related subjects, like Plato and Galileo. We finally see the Semantic Web coming into fruition, usable in our day to day lives. But it is still Google who decides to show me what it thinks I am looking for, what it thinks is interesting based on an algorithm, PageRank, they developed, based on number of relevant keywords and links.

But what if I was to ask my friends, my social network of contacts? What if I ask Twitter who Copernicus is, or services like Aardvark who query not a humongous set of data, but a collection of real people, my friends, my connections. They would point me to particular interesting articles they have read, book titles, facts they know. This is where the power of social recommendation comes into play, and the reputation (or social evaluation) of individuals, my connections. I know people who know nothing about software, or cars, or whatever, but who now a lot about philosophy, and are, for me, reputable sources of knowledge on this. They could have a list of recommended books on this subject at Amazon, or Goodreads,… or bookmarks to articles on Delicious.

How can I grow my own reputation in a connected world? By participation in the online social environment. Not a single social network (not just Facebook, or just LinkedIn), but a collection of different, topic specific networks. I am participating: bookmarking on Delicious, postings links on Facebook, blogposts on various websites, Twittering hashtags, writing book or movie reviews, reviewing restaurants (or public toilets), posting and (geo)tagging pictures on Flickr, presentations on Slideshare… The participatory design of social applications not only adds value to the network and whoever visits them, but they grow my own reputation which adds value to my own personal social network.

How does Google fit into Social Search (or Socialized Search)? Google started out as “just” a powerful search engine. Now it offers a whole bunch of, seemingly disparate, tools. With Gmail it knows what I converse about, who I talk to (people and companies) and it neatly keeps track of my address book with Google Contacts. It knows my day to day connections. Google allows me to broadcast my location using Google Latitude (in quasi real time using Android or iPhone), and knows who from my contacts I allow access to my location data, who I trust with this information. Based in Latitude’s proximity, it knows which contacts I socialize with not only online but also in real life. Google knows about Groups and Alerts I subscribe to, the Docs I have online, my search queries, my Calendar. I have a Google Profile which conveniently shows me a list of links of what it thinks are my public pages that I can add to my profile, and I can add additional ones myself. It even allows me to prioritize these links. Through my profile Google knows which social networks I reside on. It knows about me. It knows me.

Next time I ask Google “what movie to see tonight”, in stead of showing me some strangers’ recommendations, while it knows about me (and what I like), it could query my personal social knowledge network for movie reviews and recommendations, and show me a timetable for movies near me. In stead of merely searching for information, I could “discover” what my connections like or dislike, growing my relationships at the same time. Google could incorporate this through their OneBox results or optional through Subscribed Links (subscribing to my personal links). There still are some technological limitations for Social Search, especially with data portability, as a lot of this data lives behind social network walled gardens, and we might need to trust Google as a friend in order to allow it to handle this information.

Is this a privacy nightmare? It sure could be. Private data could be inferred from querying social data. But you only put out what you want, when you want it. And when you do, whatever you loose in privacy, you win in knowledge and reputation. Knowledge is power, reputation is social control.