How Will Google+ Change Social Search?
Posted by Seth Bauer on Thu, Aug 11, 2011
What is Google+? That's the question that all but 20 million users are still asking. For those without an invite, fear not; Google+ is growing exponentially. But even if you've been lucky enough to get an invite, there are some important questions that remain unanswered. One is whether and how Google+ will change social search.
A Group-Based Social Network
The foundation of Google+ is Circles, which are groups of Google+ users united by nothing other than the whim of the person who created the Circle. A user's status as a member of a particular Circle means very little for the other members of the Circle. No special status is conferred on another member of the same Circle, and any member can simply ignore any other member of the Circle. The Circle really only exists for the convenience of the user who created it.
On Stream, the portion of Google+ which is similar to a Facebook wall, posts are shared with particular Circles. Facebook has similar capabilities through its privacy settings, and Twitter users can send private messages, but Google+ appears to be the first social networking site which assumes that posts will be shared with only a subset of the user's contacts.
A convenient system for tailoring the recipients of a post to the post's content is probably an effort to cut down on the amount of information on Facebook and Twitter. How often do Facebook users want to share a work-related post with colleagues but spare their friends and family the boredom of reading it? Or how often does a Twitter user want to share a thought that would be hilarious to a group of like-minded friends but completely for family or colleagues?
Facebook and Twitter have these capabilities, but they're not convenient or intuitive. Google+ allows a user to intelligently categorize contacts based on how he is likely to communicate with them. This could have big social search implications.
Google+ also has what it calls Sparks. A Spark is basically a search term, and using a Spark finds stories, videos, and other content related to that search term. Using a Spark may help you find content which seems more "hidden" on the web. You can then share anything you find with your Circles. So, let's say you have a Circle which includes only your skateboarding friends. You can share content you find on your skateboarding Spark with only that Circle.
Google+ and Social Search
A social search is one which searches content that has been shared through social networking sites. Many types of social search include your own social graph, meaning that it searches only those users with whom you have a relationship. For instance, if you're looking for a great new skateboarding trick to learn, the first results in a social search incorporating your social graph might be a YouTube video linked to one of your friend's Facebook pages that he identified as a cool skateboarding trick.
What's interesting about Google+ is that in many ways it accomplishes the purpose of a social search before the searcher even has the opportunity to enter the social search. Google+ creates a social networking site that revolves around a manageable number of Circles, rather than an unmanageable number of friends or subscribers. Information is shared strategically with Circles. Therefore, each tidbit of information released over Google+ should, on average, be more interesting to the recipient than the information he receives on Facebook or Twitter.
So, in one sense, users of Google+ can conduct a social search simply by being a regular user of the product. For instance, a skateboarder will know to pay close attention to information coming to him from other skateboarders, because he can be more confident that the information will be related to skateboarding, not some other topic which the sender is interested in but the skateboarder is not.
And even if the user is not a regular user of Google+, any information shared via Google+ should be given a higher priority in a social search based on the user's social graph. Again, this is because any bit of information shared on Google+ is more likely to be of interest to the people with whom it is shared.
Ultimately, the impact of Google+ on social search will depend on whether it is here to stay. It is growing at an alarming rate right now, but it remains to be seen with it will supplant Facebook and Twitter as the primary means of social networking.