Whatever Happened to Social Search?
January 7, 2015
Social search was supposed to integrate social media and regular semantic search to create a seamless flow of information. This was one of the major search points for a while, yet it has not come to fruition. So what happened? TechCrunch reports that it is “Good Riddance To Social Search” and with good reason, because the combination only cluttered up search results.
TechCrunch explains that Google tried Social Search back in 2009, using its regular search engine and Google+. Now the search engine mogul is not putting forth much effort in promoting social search. Bing tried something by adding more social media features, but it is not present in most of its search results today.
Why did this endeavor fail?
“I think one of the reasons social search failed is because our social media “friendships” don’t actually represent our real-life tastes all that well. Just because we follow people on Twitter or are friends with old high school classmates on Facebook doesn’t mean we like the same restaurants they do or share the politics they do. At the end of the day, I’m more likely to trust an overall score on Yelp, for example, than a single person’s recommendation.”
It makes sense considering how many people consider their social media feeds are filled with too much noise. Having search results free of the noiwy makes them more accurate and helpful to users.
Whitney Grace, January 07, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
