Real-Time Search and the Wide Open Fire Hose

I'm not surprised that search engines like Google and Bing are now including the content of My Space , Facebook and Twitter in search results. The output is a near real-time fire hose of data combined with the historical data already available in the index. Facebook this week made radical changes to its privacy policy and it now exposing all of our status updates to the outside world (unless we restrict it). The walled garden days of Facebook are over as Mark Zuckerberg is chasing the real-time web pioneered by his competition for audience at Twitter. The question is....will this add to the value of search or detract?  More data isn't always the answer.

However there seems to be immediate value to leverage this new data flow in the social media and social networking landscape. For the first time since conventional search sites were launched we don't have to wait weeks or days for our content to find its way into the 30th page of the index results all we have to do is use our favorite social networking portals and we become an instant part of the conversation around these results.

Here is a example using the search query IBM in real-time mode at Google. The first 5 results are from social networking site Twitter. The last two are from .com style websites.

I think there is a role for both types of data in the search world, the new aggregated access to content flow from Twitter and Facebook etc adds a new dimension to what we can leverage on these services. While giving us the depth of content we need for more conventional research.

Comments

[Jim Harris]

Great post Shawn,

I recently recorded a brief video tutorial on Twitter Search. Without the real-time search results it provides, I wouldn’t be able to either make sense of, or more importantly, obtain any tangible value from Twitter.

Following hundreds (or thousands) of people on Twitter is not an effective strategy from a time management perspective. But following real-time search results, especially via a RSS reader, is both efficient and effective for staying on top of the latest flow of information from social networking sources like Twitter.

I use a combination of Google Alerts and saved RSS feeds within Google Reader to follow topics of interest to me professionally, such as Data Quality, Data Governance, Master Data Management, and Business Intelligence.

And I always recommend this approach to my clients as a safe way for them or their company to start leveraging social media for “listening purposes only.”

I definitely agree with you that there is a role for both real-time and conventional search and combining these resources does create the “Wide Open Fire House” – but the search engines and supporting tools are providing an increasing capability to focus that torrent of data into information that is both useful and actionable.

Best Regards,

Jim

[Rob Paller]

Shawn,

You're right, more data is not always better. What surprises me is that the real-time search results appear before the traditional .com links. Historically, the closer to the top of the first page the results are the more "trusted" or "influential" that result is to the searching user.

Knowing that real time results take precedence in the ranking could send people looking for information about a particular brand down a path the brand isn't expecting. This is a game changer for sure.

Rob

[Shawn Rogers]

Jim,
Great comment and I just watched the video very well done. I will do a post on it this week!!

[Shawn Rogers]

Rob,
I agree about the game changer aspect of this type of content. It will become nearly impossible for any company with a solid social strategy to participate effectively when the search results are this dynamic. If your not already in the game your going to lose on the social media front for sure.