Twitter and Facebook the new Google?

I found this article (http://bokardo.com/archives/google-erosion/) about the future of search and how Facebook and Twitter can potentially begin to erode Google’s aura of dominance. First off the author states that Google will not be beaten in the search arena, “They have the best, most capable search team on the planet. It is where most of their R&D goes, it’s where the best and brightest search wizards go, it is their bread & butter.” The author argues that Facebook and Twitter will slowly kill Google in different ways. He claims that the game going forward in search is live search, he believes that more people are going to use Twitter because that is where they start are spending most of their time online. Also the larger Twitter grows the more efficient it will be as a search platform because more people will be answering questions and communicating. Google’s real cash cow is there adsense program which the author believes will begin to lose market share to Facebook’s advertising program, which brings users highly targeted ads based on profile information and web surfing habits. Essentially the author claims that because of the enormous user engagement on both Facebook and Twitter, people will begin to use these tools as a way to find content that is more relevant to their lifestyles.
I am in agreement with the author about his assessment of the future of the online search and advertising industry. One point that he failed to bring up is that results on Google can be games easily by Search Engine Optimization and Google’s adsense program which allows websites to bid on certain keywords. I feel as though a lot of the time when I search on Google, I am sent to irrelevant or outdated websites. Yet when searching on Twitter I can find interesting up to date articles or opinions that have been posted by people I trust. As Twitter continues to see massive growth, its use as a search application will continue to improve. While I feel the author over exaggerated the strength of Facebook’s advertising I definitely see the potential that Facebook has as an advertising platform because of the ability to send highly targeted ads. But because Facebook still does not have a search model that can efficiently compete with Google, it will be nearly impossible to with Google in terms of advertising because search is an easier business to monetize.
This relates to informatics because it discusses solving the extremely complex problem of search. Living in the information age search is the most important feature of the entire internet because it helps users easily and efficiently find information. With an informatics degree you can learn how search algorithm works or how to solve problems in the field of search, possibly landing you jobs with companies such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook.

Exploring the Deep Web

It’s easy to think that anything useful or worthwhile that there is to be found on the internet has already been indexed by search engines. Unbeknownst to most internet users however, there are vast stores of information that the big name search engines have barely begun to delve into. These include everything from data made publicly available like the National Archives and resources from the Library of Congress to flight information and prices. If you consider how many databases, some say millions, that are connected to the world wide web, you can see that this not only requires discovering how to better use many of these resources but also how to recreate the search engine interface and algorithm to create an intuitive way to use this much information. This article presents some exciting new forays that are being made in this direction, and I’m very curious to see if this new field might give a new search company an opportunity to topple the majors like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft much the same way that Google rewrote the book on search and advertising ten years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/technology/internet/23search.html

New Google Maps Tweak

Last Tuesday, Google Maps underwent a brief face lift that was much needed and long overdue. Now when you do a local search, Google Maps shows not only the top 10 results of a local search on the map, but rather all of them. It still shows those A, B, C, D… listings for the top results but now also show little circles for other related spots. If you happen to click on any given circle, it will give more information about the businesses they, the circle, represent.

For example, if you search Google Maps for “Food” near “Bloomington, Indiana” (which can be searched as, “Food in Bloomington, Indiana”) you will get something like this:

Google Maps :: Food in Bloomington, Indiana

Notice how the map still lists those A, B, C, D… listing yet also has the new little circles? Yea, thats Google’s big new innovative feature. Simple. Cool. Much overdue.

Google Maps :: Food around Bloomington, Indiana

How does this relate to our class. I’m not sure about everyone else in the class, but usually around 12:30pm I’m pretty dang hungry. This new feature might help us find something new to eat, do, go…etc.

Read more via Google Lat Long Blog