Google just released a function the company calls ‘social search’, promoting it with the statement that “Search has always brought you information from across the web.” While this statement might be true in general, it is inherently flawed when applied to Google (see Premises For A Better Search Engine). Though Google Amit Singhal, a Google Inc. information retrieval employee, said, “At Google Inc., we always want to return the most comprehensive and relevant answers to your questions, and many times those answers are in the open public Web, but many times those answers are in your own personal content.” this is at best the case for a very limited amount of content indexed by Google that has not specifically written for Google. Social search seems to suggest that popular information must be the ‘right’ information. The opposite is more likely to be true.
Despite a growing awareness for online spending, the majority of consumer transactions still happens locally – for simply reasons, really: you cannot get a hair cut from the Internet or get your car washed and most consumers still like to try on the clothes they are about to buy.
Another reason though is that mobile local search still does not fulfill the promises made by the currently leading search providers (see graphic).
Now Topsy Labs is taking another swing at it by releasing a social, realtime search engine for mobile devices. The mobile app enables users to discover trends about any topic based on data from Twitter and Google+.
The search engine comes with a clever “Social Time Machine” feature that enables users to look up results on a timeline that can be controlled with a slider.
Search queries can also automatically saved so users can revisit specific results at any time, and any piece of social content can be referenced historically for any topic, term or link.
Topsy cites a Performics study which states that 32% of users search more on mobile phones than they do on computers, and that 75% of users ople think that mobile search makes their life easier. Well, let’s see ..
Topsy Labs is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded in 2006, the company is backed by BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund and Scott Banister.
The data protection agencies for the German state Schleswig-Holtstein ordered Facebook today (8/19/2011) to remove the LIKE BUTTON („Gefällt mir“-Button) from its websites citing the violation of three different consumer protection laws.
Schleswig-Holstein’s data-protection commissioner, Thilo Wechert, says that an analysis from his office shows that Facebook builds profiles of both users and non-users with data collected by the Like button, this would violate German and European data protection laws. Facebook faces fines of EURO 50,000 per violation if the LIKE buttons are not removed by the end of September.
My first gig (while still in law school) was to teach these laws to call centers of ISPs and Telecommunication companies. Ah .. the memories
In a YouTube video uploaded on July 16th 2011 the hacker group Anonymous anounced that it will take down Facebook November 5th 2011. Whereas the authenticity of the video has not been confirmed it might be a good idea to back up anything you have uploaded to Facebook.
“Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so they can spy on people all around the world,” the Anonymous message, titled “Operation Facebook” claims. It was uploaded on July 16, but it only began circulating widely around the web this week. You can listen to it above.
“Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your privacy settings, and deleting your account is impossible,” the statement continues. “Even if you delete your account, all of your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your account more private is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. … You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realize what we have done here is right. Think for awhile and prepare for a day that will go down in history: Nov. 5, 2011.”
Google claims that its mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful. At first look this seems to be a valuable goal. However, it is important to keep in mind that this mission is subordinant to the primary goal of any company which is to increase the wealth of its owners (shareholders) by paying dividends and/or causing the stock price to increase. Plagued by this paradigm Google adapted a business model (AdWords; AdSense) that in its consequence led to the development of an entirely new industry: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which in its various forms – such as content farms – has caused an explosion of digital content that is essentially marketing copy disguised as information. In short: Google consequently organizes mostly the world’s ad copy rather than the world’s information. It is hence an utterly failed attempt to effectively organize information. Unless the “search giant’ is willing to radically change its business model there seems no way out of the corner the company painted itself into.
I am working on an concept (see here) that addresses the inherent conflict while attempting to put the challenge of information organization into a wider scope than simply ‘search’ and hope to push out a minimum viable product out this year.
