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+1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

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Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#2
This is heading in the right direction, but I remain skeptical of the simple "you're connected to this person through some service (probably unconnected to the search query), so you trust them" symbol as the main recommendation symbol. This is one way Color actually interests me, they're exploring new symbols for connection, even if I think they're kind of weird and hard to understand at first glance.

Won't know for sure until I try it though.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#3
Call me skeptical, but I'm not convinced by Google's partial rollout of their new social layer.

A while ago they rolled out the new top-bar and a little later they rolled out the new profiles and now this. It all kind of makes sense, but there is no killer app/driver for all these features.

The number of integration points seems to be a problem, too. Until last week Google Mail, Reader and Groups all used different revisions of the "Google bar" on top. Disabling Google Buzz in Gmail also removes your new shiny profile, etc..

I'm anxious to see where this is going.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#4
Seems like an interesting way to try and tie in a social aspect to their search, but I think they're at a bit of a disadvantage when compared to Facebook mostly because Google profiles are not ubiquitously used. If you don't have anyone to share your +1s with then after some time I'd suspect people won't bother. I think redesigning the profile page was a step in the right direction and I think they have to come up with something to get people to fill them out and use them.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#5
post #4

Seems like an interesting way to try and tie in a social aspect to their search, but I think they're at a bit of a disadvantage when compared to Facebook mostly because Google profiles are not ubiquitously used. If you don't have anyone to share your +1s with then after some time I'd suspect people won't bother. I think redesigning the profile page was a step in the right direction and I think they have to come up wi…

Might be a nice idea to buy communities like github, photo.net and import user identities from there. Of course the privacy and the UX of such a move will dictate whether users go "wow this is great" or "oh my god now the whole internet knows about my tinfoil hat". In the meanwhile they could try to integrate identities from services that google already owns - youtube, picasa, google reader etc.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#8
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, Google should have done this years ago, even if it had no effect on result placement, think of all the data they could have collected. On the other hand, the big appeal of Google is the simplicity and minimal clutter, and this is just another useless (at least on the first search) thing added to the interface.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#9
post #7

Social search is likely the next killer app. The tastes of my friends are far more relevant to me than the judgement of bots. The question is, who will do it better: Google or Facebook? The search engine or the social graph?

I think Google has a bit of an upper hand here. They already have search data, so if they can combine that with the social data...

Plus, I don't necessarily have all that much in common with my friends, but if Google can categorize me and say "oh, people with similar interests as you liked this", that's likely much more relevant. This isn't to say Facebook couldn't do something similar, I just feel like this is much more up Google's alley.

Re: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

#10
post #7

Social search is likely the next killer app. The tastes of my friends are far more relevant to me than the judgement of bots. The question is, who will do it better: Google or Facebook? The search engine or the social graph?

Have you really thought this through? For example, here are 3 possible search queries:

1) Is Blockbuster Movie any good?

Here the opinions of your friends might be more valuable to you, as valuable to you, or less valuable to you, depending on how important it is to you to have the same taste as your friends or whether you consider their movie tastes similar to your own.

2) Courtship rituals of early-modern spain

Here the opinions of your friends are almost certainly less relevant than that of a bot, unless you run in a very niche circle.

3) Directions to Skyline Chili

Here the bot is almost definitely a better choice than your friends.

Lastly, you always have to fall back to a bot because most searches are not going to have many results that friends have actively curated. So bots will continually have a place in search, and I would argue will because more important over time, as they become smarter.

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