Googles Social Search

...Google maybe didnt want to make a big deal on this one. Read on to find out why.

The Official Google Blog announced the move with this

"We think theres tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and were just beginning to scratch the surface. Were leaving a beta label on social results because we know theres a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services."

They then give one of their nifty little videos to explain just what they are up to.

But the real concern is raised by John Batelle at his blog

"Forget the iPad, today Google is taking another step toward its stated goal of making search more social. Theres a lot of goodness in here, in terms of features and approach, but its just silly to pretend you can do any of this without directly addressing the 400 million-person elephant in the room called Facebook. Put simply: I cant figure out if this new service uses my Facebook social graph. And to my mind, thats a problem."

Batelle then takes you through his attempts to see if, in fact, the Facebook social graph is incorporated in some fashion. You can follow his humorous attempts to see what he might be missing. He even digs around to find out what is truly going on with the social search for Google as it relates to Facebook and Google sent this to him:

If someone links to his Facebook account from his Google profile, Social Search may surface that users public profile page. These are the same public profile pages already available on a search of Google.com and other search engines today. While were interested to continue expanding the comprehensiveness of Social Search, we do not currently use your Facebook connections as part of Google Social Search.

This begs the question of just how social is social search for Google. Maybe Googles announcement of this service yesterday wasnt a coincidence with regard to the timing of the iPad introduction to the world. Not including Facebook connections is a huge gap in this offering that makes one wonder just what is going on behind the scenes. Expect this beta tag to hang around for a while until this one is hashed out. Stay tuned.

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Tag: Google Social Search

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