What is the Future of Social Search?

For anyone that has spent time talking with peers online via a social network you might get the feeling that the web community is screaming out for easy access to personal, accurate, relevant and immediate information. We are seeing this with the popularity of Twitter, Digg, Facebook and the like. With so much happening so fast, it might be worthwhile asking; Where is this technology heading?

For marketers the convergence of social technologies and search technology may define a new way of examining what customers are saying and help translate the findings into useful insight which might assist with building a more compelling user experience online. Sentiment analysis aims to determine attitude, and is being used to provide greater context and relevance to customers. Like-minded peer and friend networks from all walks of life, often referred to online as "tribes", may have more of an influence on what we wish to see in our search results than our old friend the Google page rank.

Listening to customers is not exactly something new, but can be a challenging and costly exercise.

Sentiment analysis might help a digital reconnaissance team to gather relevant customer data, and may have the potential to automate, augment and/or reduce the cost of some traditional approaches to customer segmentation, qualitative and quantitative analysis.

A recent book by Stephen Baker called The Numerati explains how marketing intelligence companies like Umbria Communications can sift through the blogosphere and empower organisations with up-to-the-minute information that then might be used to help them with better product enhancements, more accurate and detailed segmentation of customers and much more. If a specific "tribe" is talking about your product or your competitor, you can find out and importantly you can assess how they are feeling.

Personal search can also be harnessed by companies directly. Making use of the mature technologies available today and empowering your web audience to make use of guided navigation will help prompt the user to find the information that is most useful and relevant to them rather than scrolling through pages of potentially irrelevant results. The benefit over time is that a community can mould the experience towards something that meets their needs.

William Shakespeare wrote; "Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find".

The more information we are willing to provide, the greater the potential for an online community to offer the results that we are looking for, but there is a real danger with privacy and security concerns. If a technology can be used to predict your behaviour and profile you specifically, whilst at the same time gaining access to some detailed personal information that is common with online social networks, then the threat is more severe and the potential impact on people's lives much greater.

Obstacles presented in the form of organsiational process may give online innovators the feeling that they are being presented with unnecessary hurdles preventing them from harnessing new technologies. Jilted feelings about compliance and legal constraints aside, if you don't want to "nuke the fridge" on your next online deployment perhaps social search may be worth a look as the real benefits are only just starting to become apparent.

Adam Bateson - director of eBusiness consultancy

Published in Digital Ministry - Australia

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What is the Future of Social Search?