Google soft-launches commenting – UGC search results
Image by manfrys via FlickrPeople are often comparing Twitter with Facebook. They’re wrong to do this. Facebook is about connections, friends and contacts. Twitter is not about this at all. It’s about information and search.
The real value of Facebook is when you have a group of friends with who you share ideas, experiences and content. Twitter, on the other hand is not really built for connecting with people – its real value comes from the comments and contributions that are added to its database and that can then be searched.
That’s why I’ve always preferred to compare Twitter with Google. On Google I search for information and get a set of results based on which sites score most highly in their algorithm. On Twitter I search for information and get a set of results based on which links are most often read and forwarded by other users. Google produces mathematical search results. Twitter produces UGC ones. Until now.
ZDNet is reporting that Google has soft-launched public comments on search results:
Google’s Searchology press conference unveiled a boatload of new features including different ways to visualize results, better support for semantic markup, and more. But when I was looking at the results page, I noticed a little comment icon. There was no mention of this.
The article goes on to describe how some users can now comment on search results and this is made pubilc to others. I cannot see this yet and so it is probably being rolled-out across the user-base slowly.
This is a huge change and shows that Google is taking seriously the potential threat of Twitter and other UGC search sources. Allowing users to comment on search results really could combine a solid algorithm with user’s own expertise. And we know that people are more likely to trust peers when making purchase decisions, so why not when searching online too.
There is obviously a lot to know about how this might work – who can comment, are these comments moderated (and if so how and by whom, will rating of sites be included too, how will Google cope when many thousands of people review one site. But these will no doubt be resolved as people start to comment on search results and use these to inform their own search.
For now we just know that UGC search is serious business. Twitter has integrated search into its main page and now google is allowing comments on it’s own search results. This really does show the power of social media. Once an algorithm would show the those results that were mathematically best suited to our query. Now users influence this – either by searching user content and links on Twitter or, perhaps, the potential for comments on Google itself.
Exciting times.
atul chatterjee:
I didn’t know this about Google. Thanks for pointing out the difference between Facebook and Twitter in such a simple form.
14 May 2009, 8:24 amFootprints (24.05.09) | Chris Deary:
[...] Google soft-launches commenting – UGC search results [...]
25 May 2009, 12:20 amAlain Saffel:
And of course the danger with Google doing this is that people will, of course, try to game the system. This will make people question the results they get in Google.
Also, have you ever tried to use Twitter search? It’s terrible! It may be useful for what’s hot right now, but the database doesn’t go back very far (maybe a few months) and finding things you know are there can be next to impossible.
Twitter search has its place, but I rarely use it. It’s just not that good.
Google search and Twitter search are different creatures, so Google shouldn’t feel threatened.
One bit of advice: you might like to define acronyms when you write a post. Not everyone knows that UGC is ‘user generated content.’
7 June 2009, 5:31 pm