SxSWi: Search and Social Network Converse

Last Saturday, former Forrester analyst Charlene Li, who is now with Altimeter Group, talked about how social networks will be "like air".

She predicts that the future will have search and networks converging to make everything we do more social, without the need for special places to go. This may still be a few years away, however.

Some examples she provided on how this would happen were custom searches on Amazon where you see only the reviews if people in your network and a personalized CPM for publications like the New York Times.

Would you be more likely to read something that someone you see as influential in your network is reading?

The problem with many of the social network activities today, including ads on Facebook, is that they require you, the user and profile owner, to do something explicitly. You need to select, or like, or share. What would happen if the preference or selection were made explicit by your search and navigation behavior? For example, finding people with similar interests at SxSWi before coming to the event.

To make social networks "like air", Li points to three essential components:

1. Identity - who you are
2. Contacts - what you know
3. Activities - what you do in the context of those activities

The two current standards that exist to being this relationship between search and networks are (1) Facebook Connect, which is still just a vehicle to bring people into Facebook but not the other way around and (2) the new Open Stack platform supported by supported by MySpace ID, Google FriendConnect, LinkedIn and the OpenSocial movement.

Why would everyone open up? Since most social activity happens outside the main networks, the simple answer is money.

Why would we put up with it? The money motive is going to be the trade off for social activity. We're still in the infancy of this movement or conversation between search and networks, and certainly privacy is a big concern. These are the early days as much as the Web was taking baby steps at the time Tim Bernes-Lee created the foundation of what we see today as the social web.

Given this premise and the possibility that social networks may become more transparent, Li recommended companies evaluate where social networks make sense:

1. Identify where social networks data and content can/should be integrated in the experience
2. Leverage existing identity and social graphs where your audience already is, e.g., Facebook Connect
3. Get your privacy and permission policies and processes aligned with an open strategy
4. Find your trust agents - "in Google I trust" or will it be Facebook?

The announcements made earlier in the day about Facebook Connect were certainly good news for moving into that direction. With the problem of having multiple sign-ins to different networks, another issue that is in the way of convergence between search and networks is that of multiple personalities.

Like many, I tend to keep my LinkedIn profile more for business and professional contacts, and other social networks for a more personal experience. Sorting these issues out is not going to be a walk in the park. The privacy concerns might even start being addressed by permission layers on the data in our social graph - "context makes content privacy easier, and social signals provide a shorthand for our mental map of relationships," said Li.

We've talked about marketing by context building. The solution for businesses looking to be found by and connect with customers and potential customers, as well as their networks, may look to get better not just at creating content worth sharing, but also provide a place where OpenID meets networks.

[Chalene Li]

Comments

[Keith Bossey]

It's funny, but it seems that we are coming full circle. The picture painted in your post leads us to to a point where we probably were 50 years ago (at least that's the impression I get, I wasn't there) where most activity (economic, social) was contained within a small geographic area and between a relatively fixed set of people that new a lot about each other. Its this sense of community that many people secretly want but can't get in there current busy lives. They want it, I would imagine, not just for "feel good" reasons, but because it makes life easier. Technology just takes the necessity of proximity out of the equation.

[David Wiggs]

One of the most forward looking sessions-- No, the best session at SXSWi! Will be interesting to watch online identities and the impact on privacy and transparency as online identity becomes increasingly valuable. Will people try to shut down access to themselves; be less likely to share every little detail and krunk photo of their lives?

[Rachel Burkot]

I like the idea of networking and search converging in the future, but don't you think it might be limiting in some ways? Like if Amazon only recommends books that people in your network are reading? I think a network should be an important supplemental tool to go hand-in-hand with much of what we do on the internet, including search, but I'm not sure they should be so inextricably linked.

[Carolyn Ann]

Doesn't Google keep getting into trouble for suggesting things like this? Admittedly, they haven't the discussion into the social-web arena; they might have more success getting it through. (Do you think they would give you and I a reward for suggesting this, Valeria? :-) I don't know about you, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that...)

Social web, meet semantic web. I don't know if anyone else has put it together, Valeria, but that was a bit of genius. :-)

Ah, you're so inspiring! :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Carolyn Ann]

Oops. That's supposed to be 'you and me'.

One day I will remember that "me" is the object. Or whatever it's called. I've been particularly good at explaining *why* the English language is so arcane.

Carolyn Ann

[Carolyn Ann]

Mental meltdown time...

I've *never* been any good at explaining the whys and wherefores of the English language.

I'll stop now. Obviously I need wither your inspiration, or another mug of coffee. Sorry! :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Keith - that is a starting point. However, with online, the network becomes more distributed thanks to the weak links at the edges. We constantly meet new people, and expand the "walls" of our circle when we do. That is different from the past and it happens because of the technology.

@David - it was a good session. It's a personal choice that every person can make what to reveal in exchange for convenience - that's part of what I got from the session. I agree it's a concern.

@Rachel - in my case, my network is constantly changing and evolving. In the same way as I don't read the same blogs today that I read when I started blogging, I see the network as a flexible membrane that keeps changing.

@Carolyn Ann - what happens is that at some point it will be something users want and request. At least I get a sense that many are already there from the conversations I had here at SxSW.

[Geoff Livingston]

Search still drives. Search in many way is what makes social content valuable to marketers. I can only see search continuing to be important as more and more content is created... Great post!

[Carolyn Ann]

Don't be so coy! You came up with a brilliant idea! I don't care if others came up with it - you articulated it.

I disagree: I don't think users will want it, or request it. I think someone will offer it to them, and they'll say "oh, riiight! That's what we want!" It will, of course, be mistaken for what people want. A bit like Twitter (no, I'm not being facetious. Where was the demand for a Twitter-like service, before Twitter?)

Geoff (no "@", sorry. I don't do "@"... :-) And, if I may be so familiar?)
Search doesn't drive the process. Search facilitates the process of discovery. It might make the content valuable to marketers, but thankfully we're more than our marketing profiles!

Actually, I'll rephrase that. Search simply enables the creation of ever more literal marketing profiles. I had to think about that, to be honest: "accurate" was too abstract; I settled on literal, but I'm not sure it's an accurate [sic] summary. "Refined", ever more refined marketing profiles, perhaps? To whit: we become our profiles?

Search, even semantic search, doesn't amount to much without the content to search. Ergo, search cannot drive, but simply must aid the discoverer. (We're not at the point of cognizant machinery. I hate to point that out, but pedants do exist, as you're probably all too aware!)

Semantic search, along the lines of Valeria's synopsis, enables more than marketing: it facilitates a very profound change in the role of Internet discovery. It has dangers - the proverbial ghetto will become a reality in extremely partisan ways, for instance.

(Just as an aside, I truly hate the word "facilitate". I once had a boss who used it endlessly; I think it suffice to note that he and I did not agree very often. Forgive my linguistic acrobatics as I try to avoid using that word! Another word I despise is "paradigm". And "disrespect" - that's a made up word, and has no place in the English language. I'll abseil from my linguistic soap box, now.)

I sincerely hope your statement is false, Geoff. Because if the sole value of semantic search, and Valeria's very clever idea, is marketing: the idea itself won't work. People will actively thwart it, unless the value is elsewhere - in the finding of people with like interests, views and values. Marketing will have to ride on the coattails of that!

Has Facebook finally found a way to make money? I sincerely hope they send Valeria a nice, big, fat check. Because what she articulated is what Facebook should be about - not the childrens playtime of that concept they currently engage in.

Carolyn Ann

PS Twitter can 'fend for itself on the whims of angels.

[Connie Reece]

Valeria, thank you so much for this post. I did not get to attend Charlene's panel, so your discussion here is important for my understanding the future of search/social. (Always great seeing you, btw.)

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Geoff - I do see more balance between search and network. We shall see what's next, as Charlene said.

@Carolyn Ann - it would be funny to get a check from a network I don't even use, wouldn't it? Indeed marketing will need to ride on the coattails of this new iteration/combination.

@Connie - good seeing you as well and congratulations again for Every Dot Connects being now part of New Media Labs.