The evolution of search
Hugh Macleod writes that Microsoft should buy Facebook because "all search begins and ends with people, not algorithms". I don't know where this diagram came from, but it expresses the evolution of search pretty perfectly — from portal to search engine to social network.
One of Hugh's commentors took issue with his view, stating that search and recommendation are not necessarily the same thing. Surely they are similar. Google's relevance algorithm is a voting algorithm based on how many other sites link. It's a mathematical model of the meatspace recommendation algorithm that Facebook represents.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Why are people so crazy for Facebook and Twitter?
I prefer Google’s search algorithm because it reacts faster than the crowd. Facebook is overhyped. The groups for discussions and recommendations are barely updated. It’s time to admit: Facebook is a big time sucker.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
It is NOT about SEARCH or SHARE.. It is about FIND.
I want a FIND engine.
September 1st, 2007 at 4:38 am
I didn’t FIND anything on Facebook yet.
My questions got no answers or only unsatisfactory answers. Maybe that’s because I am not such a famous person. If you are a more well known person with much traffic on your Facebook site, maybe then you can ask the crowd and one of your readers will have the right answer. My questions in the Facebook groups got nearly no attention.
But do I want that? Social status decides about my search results?
Oh no! I definitely prefer a democratic automatic search algorithm. Also I just don’t have the time to wait for the crowd’s answer. Mostly I am looking for news to illustrate my articles on GNews archive and GBlogsearch.