2 Social Integrations From Google

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Watch this video and you’ll hear the two social integrations that Google recently announced. After you’ve watched the video I’ll comment on them briefly.

First, Twitter will soon be integrated into Google’s search results. Of course, you knew that by now. But I think it’s interesting that Twitter will be integrated into the universal search results while the company is rolling out its new “social search”. Isn’t that ironic?

Now, moving on to the “social” search. This is going to get sticky because in order to take advantage of the social search you have to opt in. That’s going to pose a privacy issue for many people. Yet, it seems like a good product. You’ll be able to search through your network of friends to find relevant videos, photos, and other hard-to-find media (RE: hard to optimize). You’ll also be able to query your network, it seems, to find local points of interest and other information that you might have difficulty finding through a normal search.

Here’s a question: To what extent will social search be connected to Google Wave?

Here’s another question: What if you have more than one Google account? If, for instance, you run multiple websites in several niches and you don’t want them associated with each other at all, you will either have to opt out of Google’s personalized products and services altogether or maintain two gmail accounts. I wonder how that will affect the social search.