Are Search Engines “Social” Enough?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

John Battelle wrote an interesting two-part blog post on what he hopes might develop in terms of a search engine helping him make a decision. I thought it was an appropriate piece for the venue since Bing is billing itself as the “decision engine.” But is it?

According to Battelle’s ambitious dream, it’s not even close. So what is that dream?

Here’s what he says will happen in his grand dream:

I see two paths toward that goal: one is creating applications on top of “ten blue links” which help me organize and aggregate the knowledge I process while pursuing a search query, and the second is making my searches social, so I can share the process of learning and learn from those who have shared – not unlike Vannevar Bush’s “Memex” concept.

He elaborates on that a bit more in his follow up post on the same topic.

But there’s a problem with John’s dream. First, a search engine is just that. It’s not a person. It’s a robot, a program. Something designed by humans. But it’s not human itself. So you can ask all the questions you want, but the program has its limitations. A social network, on the other hand, is only limited by the number and aggregated interests of the people involved. That’s what makes search different from social networks. But John Battelle seems to be saying he wants a search engine that is also a social network. Will that fly?

It’s been talked about before. Others have suggested it. And it is probably a very good idea. In some sense, Twitter fulfills that function as well. Ask your tribe a question and you’ll get a myriad of answers. Of course, none of them may be the one you are looking for. But they’ll be there nonetheless.

The question is, are search engines adequate enough in their current form? As the human species gets better at search, more sophisticated, will we need search to expand beyond our capacity to keep up with it? Do we need intelligent apps? Is search social enough? What’s your take?