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Search, as we know it, is dead.” What he means is that, with the rise of social
networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and
even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they
want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all,
the people in your online social network should know you better than a
mathematical equation, right?
Until now, the Web has largely been a resource for information organization and
consumption, with the user functioning as a consumer. In this scenario, a search
engine is an ideal tool—you need some information (a restaurant address, the
name of a song stuck in your head), but you don’t know where to find it, so a
search engine is the natural first stop in your online journey.
Signals from your friends are better, stronger signals.
But what may turn out to be the strongest signal of all is the footprint you
make with your online identity.
All those various sources of information about you are currently stored in
different locations—on your computer’s browser history, on your Facebook page,
on the servers for Netflix and Amazon—but just imagine how accurate a search
could be if every time you had a query, the mass of data about you that exists
on the Internet could inform the results.