Social Networking Vs. Searching
I bumped onto this article “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It” by Glenn Derene, which really triggered my thoughts in the lines of more like “How would the Web Search evolve going forward?”
I will not re-iterate what’s mentioned in this article but would like to replicate that to our lives inside Capgemini. And try to come to some conclusion if “Will Social Intelligence help reduce what we Search?” I have said this a few times before to different people in various forums, as to how we can use Social Intelligence (thats what I call for social computing and intelligent analysis) to better support the people/community. Here is what I think of how we could implement a social intelligence component to a KM system.
The KM system homepage will be like our Facebook/LinkedIn homepage, with all the feeds that we might be interested in / subscribed to. So as soon as you log into it, you know who joined which community in my contacts, what topic is being discussed in the community I am part of, who is now connected to whom, etc. So I really don’t have to get into any specific section to know the updates concerning me. There will be various intelligent suggestions and recommendations such as Communities relevant to me and which I can join, people I may know, events I should attend, etc. Most, if not all, of the above information must be simply based on my profile and details I have entered in it (in My Skills, Languages, and Experience etc) and a little on my behavior on the system. I should also be provided with a little control on what and how many updates I want to see.
Now coming back to the search aspect of it; Of course we cannot take out Search all together, but we can certainly ensure that it is reduced to bare minimum. If I am an architect and invariably search on a few topics, my search results must have suggestions which will be based on my search behavior. Also, based on the search I make, my homepage feeds must contain a section covering topics that I might be interested in. So the system keeps pushing information at me which actually might be useful rather than me going and searching for it. My search results must also contain what my contacts are searching for, as in most cases we would have people in one’s team and work related connections as contacts. My search results should not just show me articles that are rated and no. of hits and comments, but also show me who out of my contacts used that article and who out of them has rated and commented on it. This kind of social intelligence will add a lot of value in addition to what we already have. There are many such things but… for now to answer the question, my view would be that, Social Intelligence like what we see in Facebooks and LinkedIns if replicated inside an enterprise as part of the KM System, then certainly our searching is going to be reduced as most of our behavior would be based on our contacts and thus our search would reduce over period of time and most of our needs will be served through the social intelligence!
I feel we are already experiencing this phenomenon on the web, where most of the websites are social network driven, so we don’t merely depend on some search result, but we ask question in our network using linkedin, facebook, twitter and the likes. There are specific applications targeted onto these networks which cover most of our search criteria like entertainment, recreation, food, travel etc. Going forward, I see one Social Network connecting (through APIs) all other websites including search and all these depending on our information on that network and contacts we have in there.
What do you feel? What are your views on Social Networking Vs. Searching?
I will not re-iterate what’s mentioned in this article but would like to replicate that to our lives inside Capgemini. And try to come to some conclusion if “Will Social Intelligence help reduce what we Search?” I have said this a few times before to different people in various forums, as to how we can use Social Intelligence (thats what I call for social computing and intelligent analysis) to better support the people/community. Here is what I think of how we could implement a social intelligence component to a KM system.
The KM system homepage will be like our Facebook/LinkedIn homepage, with all the feeds that we might be interested in / subscribed to. So as soon as you log into it, you know who joined which community in my contacts, what topic is being discussed in the community I am part of, who is now connected to whom, etc. So I really don’t have to get into any specific section to know the updates concerning me. There will be various intelligent suggestions and recommendations such as Communities relevant to me and which I can join, people I may know, events I should attend, etc. Most, if not all, of the above information must be simply based on my profile and details I have entered in it (in My Skills, Languages, and Experience etc) and a little on my behavior on the system. I should also be provided with a little control on what and how many updates I want to see.
Now coming back to the search aspect of it; Of course we cannot take out Search all together, but we can certainly ensure that it is reduced to bare minimum. If I am an architect and invariably search on a few topics, my search results must have suggestions which will be based on my search behavior. Also, based on the search I make, my homepage feeds must contain a section covering topics that I might be interested in. So the system keeps pushing information at me which actually might be useful rather than me going and searching for it. My search results must also contain what my contacts are searching for, as in most cases we would have people in one’s team and work related connections as contacts. My search results should not just show me articles that are rated and no. of hits and comments, but also show me who out of my contacts used that article and who out of them has rated and commented on it. This kind of social intelligence will add a lot of value in addition to what we already have. There are many such things but… for now to answer the question, my view would be that, Social Intelligence like what we see in Facebooks and LinkedIns if replicated inside an enterprise as part of the KM System, then certainly our searching is going to be reduced as most of our behavior would be based on our contacts and thus our search would reduce over period of time and most of our needs will be served through the social intelligence!
I feel we are already experiencing this phenomenon on the web, where most of the websites are social network driven, so we don’t merely depend on some search result, but we ask question in our network using linkedin, facebook, twitter and the likes. There are specific applications targeted onto these networks which cover most of our search criteria like entertainment, recreation, food, travel etc. Going forward, I see one Social Network connecting (through APIs) all other websites including search and all these depending on our information on that network and contacts we have in there.
What do you feel? What are your views on Social Networking Vs. Searching?
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