Nov 21

Google has just launched SearchWiki within their search results. This toolset allows users to alter the results that they receive from google. They can move results up or down, add new results, or even remove them from the results. You can also add comments to search results.

A screenshot of Google SearchWiki

Now, I should make it clear that this does not affect page rank, or even the results that other people see when doing searches. However, other people who are logged into google can see, via the SearchWiki icons, what users are doing with results. This allows the SearchWiki community to function much like reddit or Digg.

We’ve always said that the best search engine is the one that understands what the individual user wants … SearchWiki really puts that in action: this is an even deeper level of customisation than we’ve offered before, because people know best what search results they are looking for.

Juergen Galler, director of product management at Google

This is a great step forward for google. Rather than entirely trying to mathematically determine optimal search results they are actually able to incorporate opinions from people who are doing the searches. So while this won’t have an affect on most googlers, it does allow them to start to harness the massive community of people out there who want to work together to find better results.

Adding a Result to Google SearchWiki

I can only hope that this is a start of something that will provide more power to the social networks of users who are depending on google every day. Moving google a bit more towards the digg/reddit model could help to make results more relevant and also drive more involvement. Of course reddit and digg are also gameable, often times political or underhanded forces take advantage of this to bias results on the front pages of these site. Google is no where near prepared to give their rankings or results over to the mob. This method does seem like a safe way to allow those crowds to have their say without jeopardizing Google’s standing as the best way to search. Learn more about Google SearchWiki:

Nov 13

peter_shankman_at_tima
Today I had the pleasure of listening to Peter Shankman (@skydiver) talk social media at the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association monthly luncheon. This was one of the best social media talks I’ve heard, as @DjWaldow pointed out, it was on par with @GaryVee.

I tried to take notes on his big points, I’m dumping them here with a little bit of formatting. My thoughts are in italics. Please feel free to ping me for clarification.

You can’t make something viral, but you can make something good but it helps if you enable it


Talking about Where The Hell Is Matt (showed the video)- You forward this because you want to, not because he asked you to. You’re gonna go home and find it and send it to all of your friends. You’ll be 4 months late, and a bit of a loser, but that’s cool. I love this guy - he’s hilarious

In ‘96 people though the internet was AOL, people would say “I use AOL to DL pics of Pamela Anderson, how could you do something for business with that.

In order for something to become viral 10-15 years ago it had to be really good. You couldn’t just copy and paste it, you had to work to spread it on. this goes back to what I said, it’s about enabling

Read the rest of this entry »

Nov 6

A Better Look at TwitterAs a follow up to my previous article, Howto Twitter, I’ve written up a bit about the mass of applications that are now available as supplements to Twitter.
Follow this link to see the article:

There are, of course, too many to mention them all, but I have selected a few that I find the most useful, even on a day-to-day basis. For anyone getting started in Twitter, this list will help bring you up to speed a bit faster. For those who twitter everyday you may learn something new, and if not, let me know which apps I left out which should be listed here.