The Socialization of Search

In short, search is going social. But in order to understand how we got here, let's take a quick look at how search has grown along with the web.

In the early days of the web, few had a realistic expectation for just how quickly it would grow, nor how incredibly big it would become. So at the time, creating portals seemed like a sensible way to enable web users to find content. A portal (think Yahoo, circa 1998) is/was a directory of web pages gathered and manually categorized by human curators. The limitation here was that any content missed by the individuals in charge was virtually non-existent. As soon as it became apparent that this system wouldn't come close to keeping up with the rapid proliferation of online content, portals gave up on directories and started offering other tools like news feeds, stock tickers, and email addresses.

Eventually, we moved on to an algorithmic approach, building search engines that deployed robots to crawl the web looking for new content to add their master index. Rather than relying upon an individual's ability to find and list content, which (optimistically) could have lagged months behind, we could depend upon the algorithm to almost instantly match our queries with current content. This was a massive innovation, one that led a tiny startup in a garage to quickly become one of the largest and wealthiest companies in the world, and to have their name, Google, become synonymous with search. But with robots in charge, any content they missed was virtually non-existent, too, which is why search engine optimization has become a major industry in and of itself. And you know, SEOs have had a great run...

Now we're returning to a more human process, but unlike the portals of fifteen years ago, today's social approach to search depends upon everyone. With such a large number of people creating and sharing content across many different online channels, just about anything can find its way to you before the robots even notice it. No curatorial elite needed, no tireless robots needed. Just people.

Like any other subtle change in culture, this shift back toward a more human-oriented social structure has not happened abruptly, nor as a result of intentional action on the part of any one individual or organization. As far as I can tell, this process is the result of four distinct factors.

Factor 1: Rapid Fractalization
In an article written this past July, I observed that "the connections across the web, whether personal, professional, or other, are growing in number and granularity, making the passage of information faster than we can even begin to comprehend." I called this trend the fractalization of the web, because the image of a fractal, a geometric pattern that is repeated at every scale, seemed most appropriate to illustrate the speed and complexity of our growing interconnectedness. This fractalization is resulting in a massive cluster of web users and content within protected networks that are, for now, outside the reach of search engine robots. The more that fractalized networks grow, the weaker the search engine model will be in both representing the available content on the web and connecting users with that content. Indeed, the same social networking technology that enables this fractalization is what also enables human users to more quickly create and share content with one another. As a result, the number of content creators is growing to historically unprecedented levels. Consider the following quote, from Denis G. Pelli and Charles Bigelow, who recently wrote of what they consider a "writing revolution" for Seed Magazine:

"Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including books and new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. That’s 100 times faster. Authors, once a select minority, will soon be a majority."

William Drentel, in a post for Design Observer on mapping the web, also put it nicely:

"The interconnectivity of the internet is moving at a speed that defies our imagination. Blogs, a term unheard of even two years ago, are now a ubiquitous part of the online experience. Technorati, as of today, tracks 10,552,890 weblogs and 1,164,251,940 links. A month ago this number was only in the 9 millions. We are counting sand on the beach, the numbers almost beyond our comprehension."

Between the exponential growth of social network users and the equally mind-boggling growth of content creators enabled by these networks, both of which reside in "walled gardens" outside the purview of search engines, the fractalization of the web is the most obvious and important factor driving the current socialization of search.

Factor 2: Increasing Human Efficiency
Employing robots to index the web was obviously more efficient than relying upon human curators, which is why the passage from portals to algorithm-based search engines was so quick and welcome. At the time, there were no simple tools available that would allow the people creating new web content to extend their reach across their existing social networks and beyond. Search engines eventually provided the reach, but did so without leveraging the social connections already existing between people; they did this on the basis of simplicity and efficiency alone. Now, with the power of social technologies, people can communicate across extremely flexible networks immediately. If you want to alert and engage people around your content, you can find the most appropriate channel based upon who you are speaking to with that content using any number of formats (i.e. status updates, tweets, blog posts, comments, images, videos, etc.). As content sources increase, the ability for people to connect one another to new content will exceed that of search engine robots to find and index it. If you're at all skeptical about this, consider how many recent newsworthy events were "scooped" by Twitter users long before the major networks were able to broadcast them. When you begin to notice Twitter posts containing links to content that has yet to appear in search engine results, you'll naturally switch your focus from using search engines for finding new content to depending upon social networks to bring it to you. This is already happening; human efficiency is exceeding robot efficiency.

Factor 3: Acting Upon Trust
Social networks are voluntary, opt-in communities. Because they attract willing participants to a virtual setting, social networks coalesce largely around common interests rather than particular factors, such as location, gender, age, ethnicity, or occupation. When users encounter content within virtual social networks, they are "pre-qualified" for it and more likely to trust that it is more relevant to their interests than any content that appeared in their most recent search engine query. If a friend sends me a link or simply posts one to a social network profile, I am much more likely to consider it a recommendation worth following up with than one of the millions that return in search engine results. While this may not affect the fact-checking or "look up" power of search engines at the present time, top engines like Google know their days of search preeminence are numbered. Their Social Search experiment, which delivers results pulled from your specific social network within their algorithm-generated results, is indicative of their recognition that trust is central to the way people find and engage with content. People trust people and people act upon trust.

Factor 4: True Equalization
Finally, one of the most exciting results of the social focus of the web has been the potential for true equalization among people. Because of the ease of access to powerful content creation tools, just about anyone can make themselves heard on the web today. Whether through blogging, YouTube, Twitter, or some other network, regular people have quickly accumulated influence online without needing to conform to the traditional celebrity-making systems that create music and movie stars. While this is certainly encouraging from a purely social point of view, equalization is probably the most troubling factor to businesses- particularly, but definitely not limited to, consumer brands. Again, I'll quote from Seed authors Pelli and Bigelow on the impact of equalization. Notice how everyday people are empowered to force change upon much larger entities in a way unheard of before now:

"Today, at 0.1 percent authorship, many people are trading privacy for influence. What will it mean when we hit nearly 1 percent next year and nearly 10 percent the year after as the current growth predicts? Governments, businesses, and organizations must adapt to a population that wields increasing individual power. Protestors used Twitter to discredit the election in Iran. When United Airlines refused to reimburse a musician for damaging his guitar, the offended customer posted a song online—“United Breaks Guitars”—and United’s stock dropped 10 percent."

This last factor is certainly much more difficult to swallow than any of the previous three. The vulnerability it represents to any business is quite intimidating. But fractalization, efficiency, and trust will also be game changers to all businesses, not just the major search engines. Considering these four factors, and the ways in which they are shaping how we create, find, and share content over the web, is essential for any company hoping to continue to effectively navigate the complexly interwoven real and virtual worlds.