4.+Social+Search

(From [|Tim O'Reilly] )

We've all experienced the shift from Web 1.0 (the static web) to Web 2.0 (the social web). We are online interacting, socializing, networking, and creating content -- lots and lots of content. We work online. We learn online.

Our time online is increasingly spent in social networks, like Facebook. "The social network [Facebook] accounted for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, with Google.com notching 7.19 percent of visits. The search term "facebook" also accounted for 2.11 percent of all search queries made worldwide, while Google only accounted for 0.63 percent of search terms" ( eWeek article ).

A single social network is garnering more visits than the largest search engine. We know the value of online search, but what is the benefit of social networking? Surely it must be larger than the ability to see pictures of old classmates. George Seimens has developed a learning theory called Connectivism, which purports that our knowledge lives in our network.

"Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing." Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

(From Knowing Knowledge, a wiki book by George Siemens, 2006.)

So, if our knowledge, or at the very least a LOT of data, lives in our online networks, how do we harness this information? Social search.

media type="custom" key="9970285"

Perform a social search of Twitter. Please follow a trending topic, geographic area, or hashtag in Twitter and report your findings. How might this be used? Did you find something you might not have found with traditional searches?


 * Twitter Search Resources** - video on Using Twitter Search
 * Twitter Home Page - @http://twitter.com/
 * Twitter Search Operators - @http://search.twitter.com/operators
 * Trending Topics on Twitter - @http://twitter.com/trendingtopics
 * Twitter Help: About Trending Topics - @http://support.twitter.com/entries/101125-about-trending-topics
 * Trendistic (another Twitter search) - @http://search.trendistic.com/
 * Tweet Stats (summary of trending Twitter topics) - @http://tweetstats.com/trends
 * Foller (stats on Twitter users) - @http://www.foller.me/
 * TrendsMap (a world map overlaid with Twitter topics) - http://trendsmap.com
 * DataSift - a paid service to filter and research Twitter, Facebook and other social information - []