Social Networking and Searching are Not Revolutionizing the Web as We Know It

Date: September 9, 2007

As I was in a waiting room recently, I found myself flipping through a copy of The Times. The Times cannot consider me too big of a fan, really, but one article piqued my interest. It was talking about Facebook–like pretty well everyone is lately–and how it was “ironically a site for teens that will make the web grow up.” Honestly, where do these people come from? But, to that journalist’s credit, he’s not preaching alone. A lot of people truly believe that social networking, particularly the legs of the concept like MySpace (I refuse to link) and Facebook, are revolutionizing the Internet. However, if anything, I see these features as mere extensions of what already exists, and more shall extend from them in time.

People are quick to think something is going to be the catalyst that totally changes the web. That’s how many people think, that one singular item or event forever changes something, when in fact it is many little changes over time that ultimately leads a product or society to be altered. Case in point: the Internet you’re using now was not built over night, but very few people, myself included, would go into great detail about the years of thankless labor that birthed it. It was many changes, over time, that has brought you the access you currently enjoy (or don’t enjoy, depending on your connection). A more modern case would be to remind everyone of the cheap jargon used in regard to MySpace just a year ago. It’s now the cheap jargon used for Facebook; though of the two, Facebook may be slightly more worthy. The point is the hype has been mostly inaccurate, and the Internet is very much the same now as it was last year; it’s just got a few more bells and whistles.

And while some may argue that things like MySpace and Facebook have forever changed the web, I would argue to what extent they have, because few of us find sites like them anything beyond time wasters. But, sure, let’s discuss it. Let’s discuss this idea that a “social web” is going to usurp the search king that is Google or at least look at to what extent things have changed.

“Social networking has redefined our identities!”

No, it really isn’t. The Internet is not revolutionized simply because you can find a person that you shared markers with in second grade on Facebook or because you can upload videos, for free, on YouTube. Yes, these are all great things, but the problem with this thinking is that it isn’t actually doing anything but altering some of our virtual selves. For the majority of users on Facebook and other social networking sites, there is no drastic, real-world effect. What I mean by that is while you may have 150 “friends” of all types on one or more of these websites, you are probably still going out for a drink with the same five or so that you usually do. The disparities between talk and reality are even greater when you look at sites whose sole purpose is to help others meet in person; so often you will find the people signing up online to meet together is much higher than the actual number of people who do show up to meet.

The idea that social networking has positively and forever altered our relationships is worth arguing. It has, however, made some of us obsessed and possibly less productive.

“Social networking has entered all parts of our lives. It’s changing how we do things.”

Not really, no. In fact, let’s look at the idea that Facebook has changed a lot, considering it’s in the limelight of late. Facebook only has a little over 30 million users. Now, while 30 million users can present quite a force to be reckoned with, let’s consider the following.

Not all users are active. Some accounts are likely “dead.”
Not all active users are frequently active users.
That’s 30 million in a world of seven billion. You do the math.

The news sensationalizes things to the point of blatantly lying. Thank you, Media. Somewhere around an estimated 800 million people are online. Even when you consider MySpace, which touts over 100 million users, you must first take away fictional accounts, dead accounts, corporate accounts, group (band) accounts, and probably even political accounts, before you can come up with an accurate number of users. I say this, because those account types are not representative of single, active users online. So even the social networking giants, such as MySpace, represent only a tiny portion of active people online–a niche, in other words. It also happens to be a niche that is currently very profitable, so you can bet this is one of the reasons its written about a lot lately. (Oh, and of course News Corp. owns MySpace.)

So when you hear someone say that Facebook’s recent decision to allow profiles to be indexed in search engines “transforms Facebook from being a social network to being quasi-White Pages of the Web,” take it with a grain of salt for innumerable reasons, no matter the source.

Social Networking and Searching are Changing Web Searching

I’ve heard a lot of talk about “social searching” in the tech circles lately. For those not so interested in this sort of stuff usually, here’s a good definition of it from Wikipedia:

A social search engine is a type of search engine that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users. Example forms of user input include social bookmarking or direct interaction with the search results such as promoting or demoting results the user feels are more or less relevant to their query. When applied to Web search this user-based approach to relevance is in contrast to established algorithmic or machine-based approaches where relevance is determined by analyzing the text of each document or the link structure of the documents (ex: the basis of PageRank). 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.

I will actually much sooner buy into the idea that social networking has affected our relationships than I will the idea that social searching will replace algorithms. Am I the only one who so greatly distrusts the general population to serve me with good content; more importantly, relevant content? Even Wikipedia, which I thoroughly believe in, has its major faults.

One of the reasons social searching has problems is because it is significantly biased. The bias, of course, changes from site to site, thus creating Internet cliques of varying sizes (not to say they haven’t always existed, of course). For instance, Digg has a certain attitude that maybe Clipmarks lacks; the majority attitude on a website will greatly dictate the content you are served. This doesn’t happen as often with computer algorithms, because a computer only shows as much bias as the programmer allows it to. In Google’s case, the bias is according to the types of sites that link to the site you are searching for, whether they are worthwhile, updated frequently, writing about what you’re searching for, etc. It’s almost like one giant probability algorithm that says, “If these sites write about these things, and they all link to this one, what is the chance that the user will like the most linked to site more?” Tricks can be done to affect results, but that takes time and effort that most will not carry out, and Google will punish those who do by not indexing them in time. To make a long story short, I don’t want groupthinking when I am looking for content, at least not to the extent that social searching enables it.

Social searching also fails because not everyone is tech savvy. The newsflash here is that there will never be a time where everyone is tech savvy. Sure, the children of today will be much more adapted and familiar with the Internet than I was at their age, but there will still be individuals from their generation that find their understanding and niche interests are in different areas, and so they will choose not to learn as much about the Internet and computer technologies and terminologies. There will always be a place for computer customer service helplines and technicians, just like there will always be a place for plumbers, electricians and constructors.

To show you how social search fails to a great degree, I need point you no further than IMDB, which is one of my favorite websites, because it keeps me from watching utter crap all the time. IMDB introduced “plot keywords” to all their movie and episode pages this year. By “plot keywords,” they really mean tagging, but they don’t call it that, because they already know a hefty chunk of their user base would freak out at that word. Either way, they have tagging, the ability for users to submit related terms and keywords for the movie. Tagging is often a core component to social searching, and while I find it handy sometimes, I also find it absurd, because, much to the politically correct thinker’s dismay, not everyone is created equal intellectually, and some people really are stupid. And these people get to make keywords, too. It’s really quite frightening when idiots get online.

Let me direct you to user-submitted keywords for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Here are my personal favorites:

Speech (Because most movies don’t have that, you know.)
(The physical violence ensemble.) Severed arm; severed finger; severed head; shot in the neck; stabbed in the arm; stabbed in the chest; stabbed in the leg; shot in the chest; shot to death; crushed to death; hit in crotch; knife in thigh; shot in the forehead.
Male Bonding
Eye (Yes, just eye.)
Swarm Tactics

Now, there is such a thing as catering to niches, but I am pretty sure that not many people will be searching for swarm tactics, in hopes of finding a film like Lord of the Rings. If anything, social searching is an extension of the way we have been searching for years now. It will not replace search as we know it. It will continue to complement it and enhance it. It won’t kill any giants like Google, unless Google and others completely stop advancing their code. (Only AOL does things like that.)

Conclusions

There is no new puzzle, only new puzzle pieces to fit into the puzzle we were already putting together. Stop buying into the jargon of “web 2.0″ and “social networking” and “social searching” and, most of all, “viva la revolución.” The web isn’t growing up any more than it once was. There have been major changes to the world, thanks to the Internet, but they have taken time, and they have not come about due to one part of the Internet, such as the socialization of it–which has, quite arguably, always existed. The Internet simply has more people connected and working with it is all.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Kav P

September 9, 2007 at 7:07 pm

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Damn straight. My searching and networking activities remain pretty much the same as they have ever since I started using the Internet nine years ago, and then there are people such as our silly Greg who function just fine on the Internet while avoiding sites such as Facebook like the plague; it’s not as if he is disadvantaged by this ‘revolution’ going on without him!

The IMDB searches are hilarious, I quite agree. I didn’t realise that ‘axe murder’ was such a central theme to the Lord of the Rings!

On a slightly less relevant note, I’m ashamed that I read ‘helplines’ as ‘helpliness’, a word to go alongside ‘happiness’ and ‘friendliness’. Erm. I’ve been in Japan too long.

Anyway, an interesting read. I’m surprised that ‘Second Life’ didn’t make a mention in the artile though. I mean, that’s totally revolutionising the way people live their lives. Although recent research suggests that it just may be a central contributor to the obesity problem; online diets just don’t seem to work as well in the first life. :(