Computers vs Humans: Who will win the Search War?

Categories: Search StrategyPosted on August 26th, 2007

Colleague Robert Scoble (who doesn’t want to be on Techmeme) suggests that human type systems (like the social graph) will be better at finding and delivering relevant information. It’s suggested that Google is already dead, but doesn’t realize it.

MacroSearch engines are too slow to adopt to MicroSearch engines that are looking at small groups of poeple, their network, and how the share information.

Watch his video and let me know what you think –I really believe he’s onto something again.

(Update: On a related vein, we should also be paying attention to the growing discussion about LifeStreams, a way of aggregating personal information. Done correctly, this could aid the social graph in finally organizing our personal and network data)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Search Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

Nathan Ketsdever

Keeping Scoble out of tech meme is a little like keeping Marc Cuban of the Sport section of the Dallas Morning News. Not surprisingly it made Techmeme.

Mahalo can't be the next google unless that offer collaborative services like google. Second, I do 75% of my searches in advanced search mode, and I don't think Mahalo has the depth. Third, searches are about information. Google has google books, which means it subsumes Mahalos search by a long shot.

Alternatively, announcements from Scoble, Tech meme, and you probably would indicate that folks will be giving Mahalo another look.

On a side note...your white paper was awesome!! Planning on weighing in on Cuban's "web 2.0 sucks post?"

jeremiah_owyang

Good feedback Nathan.

Cuban's post on 'the internet is boring and dead' has already been retorted by many responses (as I knew it would) I've nothing to add that hasn't already been said. Generally, I don't respond to bloggers that say things are 'dead' --it's link bait.

Glen Allsopp

I disagree with a lot of things he says. For some similar thoughts to mine check out the seomoz blog
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/

AndyBeard

This post actually demonstrates the failings of Techmeme perfectly.

You didn't offer any additional content of value, yet you appear on Techmeme by default as do a number of other people who more or less just posted the video.
You can also just end up on the same stream just by mentioning Facebook in a title.

Robert made a big thing about SEO titles etc, but Techmeme if anything is worse.

In Google, this post probably wouldn't appear, because it doesn't contain any content.

jeremiah_owyang

Andy Beard

Techmeme doesn't scan content, it just watches the threads in the linking "fabric".

I do notice if I have a series of links, then it won't show on techmeme.

EVERY system can be gamed --although that was not my intention.

jeremiah_owyang

Andy, by the way, I added a bit of content to the post before I saw your comment.

Bob Warfield

Scoble is right, it can be done. I'm not so sure about Mahalo doing it, but Yahoo certainly could:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/soci...