What's the Big Deal With Social Search?
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Saved by 10 people (-8 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-08-16
- Edhchi on 2008-09-10 - Tags social , search , socialsearch , for:lclee , for:r0wb0t , for:uir
- Sreitshamer on 2008-03-07 - Tags metamap , socialsearch
- Mbauwens on 2007-08-04 - Tags P2P-Search , P2P
- The_librarian on 2007-07-16 - Tags lesezeichen-symbolleiste
- Ggrosseck on 2007-03-17 - Tags social_search , twitter
Public Sticky notes
social search tools are internet wayfinding services informed by human judgement.
Highlighted by jackie
But that word "informed" can mean many things. In its broadest sense in this context, informed means "influenced," and in the best of all possible worlds this influence is helpful, thoughtful and wholesome.
Highlighted by jackie
algorithmic search engines, which rely on automated software based crawlers and indexing systems, are social search systems to a degree—after all, the software is written by people and incorporates judgments about quality, relevance and importance of web sites.
Highlighted by jackie
Social search as it's evolving today incorporates both automated software as well as human judgments about the nature of web content. That's what makes social search intriguing—and fundamentally flawed, at least at this point.
Highlighted by jackie
Fundamentally, no matter how many people get involved with bookmarking, tagging, voting or otherwise highlighting web content, the scale and scope of the web means that most content will be unheralded by social search efforts. The web is simply growing too quickly for humans to keep up with it.
Highlighted by jackie
It simply means that people-mediated search will never be as comprehensive as algorithmic search.
Highlighted by jackie
Another problem arises with tagging.
Highlighted by jackie
Another factor is human laziness.
Highlighted by jackie
Social search takes many forms, ranging from simple shared bookmarks or tagging of content with descriptive labels to more sophisticated approaches that combine human intelligence with computer algorithms.
Highlighted by jackie
The web lacks what librarians call a "controlled vocabulary," a set of terms that have specific, unambiguous meanings that can be used in a uniform, consistent fashion by everyone tagging web content. Without this controlled vocabulary, tagging ultimately remains a chaotic, messy process.
Highlighted by jackie
Because PageRank is relying on the collective judgement of webmasters linking to other content on the web. Links, in essence, are positive votes by the webmaster community for their favorite sites.
Highlighted by jackie
Wayfinding, because they're not strictly search engines in the sense that most people know them. And human judgement means that at least one, but more likely dozens, hundreds or more people have "consumed" the content and have decided it's worthy enough to recommend to others.
Highlighted by jackie
What is social search? There isn't even a good definition, because just about everyone who's doing some form of social search is trying a different approach. Simply put, social search tools are internet wayfinding services informed by human judgement.
Wayfinding, because they're not strictly search engines in the sense that most people know them. And human judgement means that at least one, but more likely dozens, hundreds or more people have "consumed" the content and have decided it's worthy enough to recommend to others.
Highlighted by blendedlibrarian
Social search is garnering a lot of attention these days, but despite all the hoopla it's not likely to displace traditional algorithmic search any time soon.
What is social search? There isn't even a good definition, because just about everyone who's doing some form of social search is trying a different approach. Simply put, social search tools are internet wayfinding services informed by human judgement.
Highlighted by vuorikari
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