The social networks and search engines for the next decade

Lead: Ben Elowitz, co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a new media company, has published an article in TechCrunch in which he Elowitz that social networking will be fully integrated with search engines over the next 10 years. Then become a tireless personal assistant, can plan daily life for users, improve decision-making efficiency.

The following are the main contents of the article:

Bing and Google already have a new search interface, which is designed to give users the best possible answer by better guessing their intentions. And their actions have clearly shown that search will be directly integrated with social interaction.

This change is sensible, because Google's list is useful, but Bing has introduced a more intelligent feature-"People who may know the answer" (arranges who might know). In my opinion, this should be the first real integration of social and search, but also point to the future direction of development.

There is a lot of information on the Internet, but it is still difficult to find the right people to provide the right information. The best thing to do is to find someone who really knows the relevant information, and if that person is a good friend, that's great. So, the point is, when I ask a question, there are many ways to find the best answer, and if the search engine fails to provide the best answer, it should provide a clue to guide us through the search for a knowledgeable person, rather than looking for the right answer in a haystack every time.

In addition to a few more pictures and toolbars, the search engine's appearance in the last 12 years has changed little. Integration with social networks will be a major overhaul of the industry and is already in sight.

10 years from now, our needs will not change much today-eating, traveling, weekends, making decisions, and so on. But by then, the search engine that integrates social functions will be very different from today, and we can't even call it "search."

The future of social search is more like a thoughtful and intelligent right-hand man, even if 3 o'clock in the morning wake up, it will not have any complaints, it may have the following characteristics:

Prediction

Tuesday night, I felt hungry. At this time, my mobile phone know I just bought a sweet potato, and according to the past, I usually eat at home, not to mention the outside weather is very cold, but also raining. So when I'm looking for a cookbook, my phone will automatically push the sweet potato recipes that Facebook friends shared last week.

Personalized

When I arrived at Sao Paulo airport, I wanted to use my mobile phone to find a local public transport map, and my phone had found that I hadn't been here before, and even knew I bought a Foreign language handbook from Amazon last week. So it began to scan TripAdvisor's comments and found that the bus system in Sao Paulo would make outsiders mad. At this point, it will load the map, while advising me to rent a car. My Facebook profile shows that I like Audi best, so the phone will recommend an Audi rental point a few metres away.

Social

Florence and the machine are coming to New York for a concert, and I'd love to. I called some friends, but they were not in New York. It's boring to go alone, but I don't know other fans who are crazy like me, and social search can help me fulfill my long-cherished wish.

With this service, you can also accomplish countless other tasks, after all, this hard-working personal assistant to your schedule and preferences have been at your fingertips, can help you refine a variety of related information. Most people don't have personal assistants, but they leave a lot of personal data on the web, and they can get personalized referrals by integrating them. That's why Google, Facebook and Apple are scrambling to recruit good engineers.

In addition, the more we understand social search, the more accurate the advertising, the higher the cost of advertising. The key to realizing the above idea is to design excellent software that will identify us as a complete person. Search engines are undergoing a huge shift, not just identifying keywords, but also understanding the user's various qualities, including personal history, background, and social relationships. In other words, search engines need to provide different answers to different users, rather than being stereotyped.

Apple Siri is clearly one of the closest services to the idea, at least in a very conceptual approach, albeit far from functional. This type of voice-answer interaction is far more advanced than a long list of search results. But to fully optimize the user experience, the key is to collect, integrate, analyze various data, and in a more decision-making efficiency of the way feedback to the user.

By then, the time wasted due to inefficient decision-making will be released. What am I supposed to do with all this time? Maybe consider a trip to Sao Paulo.