The social media scene has become a disjointed, fractured world of information and disinformation that is a mess to track.
Paul Chaney points out the similarities of search features on Twitter, Blog Talk Radio, You Tube and Google. Google of course being the king of minimalism.
Paul points out that the search feature is taking more a center stage in these portals.
Search has become much more of a focal point in these sites than heretofore. Twitter calls itself a real-time search engine. Blog Talk Radio's interface never put as much emphasis on search as it does now. The same holds true for YouTube.
The point is that a new concept has been invented. Real time search. But much like social media, real time search is not necessarily new. Google and other major engines worth their salt have always spidered active sites.
Now how well they show up on the engines is a whole different thing. Nevertheless, these sites have a search problem. Even though as Paul points out they are making search more out and front. However, onboard website search algos usually do not necessarily do a very good job of search.
For example, You Tube (with Google as its owner and backing), can only search text. Text that is not available in a video obviously. So they are relegated to other ranking criteria that have been proven to be easily manipulated and poor for relevance years ago. Think Alta Vista.We teach video ranking at http://www.realestateguerilla.com
So how good is Twitter at search? Well let's just say it isn't Google. And you can hashtag( #)all day long to help out the conversation, but going through those searches can be a real drag and not very relevant.
And that brings me to the larger point.
Search Engine Marketing is Dead?
Well first off let me ask an elusively obvious question. Are Twitter conversations or Videos really that important to rehash and find? Or do they spread more virally than through typical means of marketing
Social media and 2.0 technology have made for a much more efficient way to interact. It is not new. Just more public and robust. Making for a more pleasant and richer social experience than say a Forum or chat room.
This efficiency has created a mashup of noise and who more capable of figuring out how to efficiently index that noise than Google?
And may I ask do we really need to search that noise? Time will tell.
