Update On Social Search from Google and Bing
Posted by dro9959
An update for the discussion on the experimental Social Search feature added by Google (and Bing):
According to the Director of Product Management at Google, Tom Stocky, the service is meant to make an individual' s search results increasingly relevant.
One example provided by Stocky is if you are looking for reviews for a movie and one of your friends has written one on that movie, perhaps on his blog, it will then show up on your search results. These results will be show at the bottom of the search page in a separate section labeled "Results from people in your social circle."
Link to an article with an explanatory video by Google -
http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=15822&Title=Google_adds_social_media_activity_to_search_results
In addition, the privacy issue has to be addressed. Another interesting article mentions the fact that Bing and Google will have to be very careful about including information in search results from Twitter or Facebook profiles that are locked or private.
Neither of the two search engines have said anything about an opting-out setting for users not wanting the eventual full-scale Social Search, which would be either not contributing to the search index or not seeing the extra search results. However, Bing said that they would only keep tweets and status updates for a week, and then dispose of the information.
What are your views on how these developments will affect online privacy in the future?