“People who might know”
Bing and Google each recently unveiled its own new search interface, designed to better intuit your intent and help you get to the one best answer more efficiently. And they’ve meet it ever more clear that search is heading straight for a merger with social.
The changes are smart. Google’s knowledge graph is useful – when I search for certain things, I just want a cheat sheet. What is Faraday’s Law, again? What exactly is a geoduck?
But Bing’s new feature – “people who might know” – is even smarter. This is the first major attempt at a merger of search and social – unless you count Search Plus Your World, which I don’t – and this is undeniably the way we’re headed. There’s a lot of information on the internet, but getting the right info from the right person is still a huge, and mostly unsolved, undertaking. Nobody knows the answers better than, well, somebody who knows the answers. And so much the better if it’s someone I trust. (Thank you, Jeff, for the Singapore recommendations!) The fundamental insight is that when I ask a question, there are lots of ways to help me find the best answer. If you don’t have it, point me in the direction of someone who does. Don’t make me ask the same question in a million permutations and sift through a list of 20 possible right answers every time.
What’s more interesting is that this is the biggest step forward we’ve seen since search results started looking 12 years ago the way they still do today (just with more images and toolbars now – exactly what Google got rid of back then!).
Stagnation followed by the springtime of innovation is probably the surest sign that a major disruption is imminent. (And if that weren’t enough, just think of how much Facebook’s stock price would rise if they captured even a small share in search.)
What’s the endgame? In 10 years, I’ll still need recipes for dinner. And recommendations for hotels in a new vacation spot. And to find something to do on the weekend. I know how I would make these decisions today, but how will I make them in 2022?
The true merger of social and search will look nothing like the search we know today. I don’t even think we’ll call it “search.”
via TechCrunch – Ben Elowitz
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