Discussion on:

Search can't scale without social, and Bing has Facebook and Twitter on its side

My searchs tend to be for very specific pieces of information.

I would say the one thing that would help is if we stopped, or at least made very difficult, the SEO scam. You use this as a reason for the existence of the problem. Why not address the issues rather than trying to work around them?

Seems to be the case in a lot of things that people aren't prepared to consider addressing the actions of the few that mess it up for the many. Instead we impose more restrictions on the many because of the actions of the few. Not only in the IT sphere, but everywhere.

I agree with dogknees .. the true issues aren't being addressed. Nor will they be .. marketing (profit) by both Microsoft and Facebook will always be the primary goal.

I use a search engine as a tool, not a 'social event.' I truly don't care if anyone I know, or don't know, likes or dislikes a page. Sorry, that's *my* decision and I am quite capable of thinking for myself. I'm fed up with the current smothering 'integration' of Facebook into every aspect of computer usage with every new program or update. And who keeps smiling at all the profits while privacy and security still continue to be a far remote afterthought?

Thanks for the article. My use of Bing will stay at 0%.

I do use Facebook, but it is almost always to see what articles my friends have posted. I search to get data, not to find out what my friends are doing. I use Bing about 5 minutes a month, and Chrome and FF the rest.

BigSteve666: I don't understand the correlation between Bing and Chrome or FF. I see Bing relative to Google or other search engines. I see Chrome and FF relative to Internet Explorer or Safari. I use Google because I have almost forever - it's a habit!

Bing is a search engine; Chrome and FF are browsers.

Google is using a visited page ranking and bing is using a facebook "I like" ranking. But who will tell that a site which don't offer the "I like" button is less usefull? It would be a little bit different if there would be a "I don't like" button too.
I can't understand why so many serious pages add these facebook stuff. Even I use facebook but I'm quite proud that some of my friends took me off their list arguing that I'm occasionally online and so there is no need to have me on the list. I don't mind about any votes of facebook members because "only death fishes are swimming downstream". I'll keep my own opinion and will decide what is important to me and what isn't.
In this case a "visited page" ranking seems to be more usefull I suppose.

I wouldn't take most of my 'friends' or relatives' recommendations on gardening, bird watching, best route in or out of a race track, or many other areas of interest. If I wouldn't take their advice personally, why would I care what web sites they 'like'?

Bing may leverage social better than Google, but it remains an inferior search engine. Regardless of who recommends the results Bing delivers, Google more often delivers the results I find useful. Bing doesn't effectively search Microsoft's own content, much less its partners.

...more than you do an 'answer' per se. Being 'on the same page' (pun intended) as your e-friends is what you really want from a search(!).
Lemmings will be more than happy to give you directions to the broad and easily-travelled road: We're all going off that cliff; be sure to stick together...no stragglers!
A desire to view content NOT approved by the preponderance of your 'friends' may constitute abberrant behavior.

The same could be said for Amazon. You search for something. Let's say a book on Google. You then exit your browser. You return to Amazon a day later and your defauilt Amazon page is littered with Google related items and then you get some items that cause you to scratch your head and ask WT? is this doing here?

Even worse, when you do a search on Google, your search also shows other stuff that has nothing to do with Google at all.

I once did a search on a hard rock band and a Celine Dion showed up in the search. Go figure.

It shows that no matter what you look for - whether Bing, Yahoo, Google or whatever - that the results you get will either be irrelevant, rediculous or actually accurate.

I use Google as my primary search engine and I laugh at some of the results I get.

In the spirit of Santeewelding: careful - or yourself you might be gelding.

Bing would have a hard time with me as I have never had a Facebook or Twitter account.
What does it do then ,match Hotmail contacts to other peoples accounts?

Wow. Google's swamped. They're looking for a way to quantify relevance, and they're going social. It guess it's the obvious choice, but it's fraught with risks.

The problem is not immediately obvious, but it's real. Picture the social Internet in 1964. You're a white guy researching Martin Luther King Jr.'s attempt to change America in a very good way, and Google keeps returning results from within your social bubble, results your friends like. You, very naturally, hear your own pre-curiosity opinion echoing back to you. Your neighbors and friends keep +1'ing articles pointing out how King's a womanizer and commie-sympathizer, so you search and keep learning what you already know.

Apply the same formula for relevance to Iraqi WMD, or Palestinian statehood, or the recent riots in Britain and you have a world-changing issue. The problem is one of relevance, though. How does Google know which articles are "real", much less relevant, strictly from internal content and external links. Google's algorithm worked magic back in the '0X's, but in the second decade of our century the haystack is too large even for Google. And there are too many infectious hypodermics hidden alongside the nice little needles we all seek.

I wish them luck. We're all going to need it.

This sounds like it will be susceptible to a lot of circular logic and mob mentality. I could see someone posting an incorrect or partial truth and then many people latching on to it as true just because, "well look at all the other people who are linking to it - it must be true.!"

Considering how frigging stupid a lot of people are on highly technical and so-called professional sites I can't wait till extensive mining of "social" sites for data. Oh boy!

"All's Social" fever will just follow Orkut's path,
Or did something radically changed in the world since them and we didn't notice ???

I used all the different popular search engines until Google came along. I've used Google exclusively since and I haven't seen any problem finding the information I'm looking for. Perhaps people just don't know how to come up with a good combination of keywords, but I've seen Google do a good job even when people enter their search criteria in the form of a question.

(Aside from my usual failure to comprehend social networking, that is. )

If the amount of data is getting too big to effectively search, how will integrating even MORE data (in the form of social pages) resolve the problem?

The thing that's wrong with Google is that they keep too much personal information. The thing that's wrong with facebook is that they keep and share tooooo much personal information. None of the search engines will work well as long as the site with the most money will get listed higher up. I too have seen ads on every page I visit for a product that I had purchased online several months earlier. Sorry but all the ads in the world can't make me buy a product again that I have just purchased. All these ads seem to originate from Google and I don't even use Google search. Somehow Google can keep up with what you do online whether you use their search or not. Bottom line your life is being sold to the highest bidder.

If you are looking for real information it should be from a source that is minimally biased, and has useful content. If the searching is for commercial purposes, then perhaps the 'liked' sources are fine. The risk is making everyone satisfied with what they think is true, and missing reality. For example, science is not based on voting. Consensus science is an oxymoron. Of course, one wonders whether any science should be web-based. Multi-disciplinary work may benefit from broad searching for connections. Policy work could certainly benefit from broad searching of unbiased sources. Social bias is risky, along the lines of 'the blind leading the blind'.

If Google & Bing goes with ALWAYS using you social network to "refine" results you will soon get a filter bubble wrapped around all searches that you do if it reconizes you.

It will, in effect, act as a complete block on items outside your calculated (by them) social / search history and never show up anything else that falls outside the statistical "norm" it has deteremined as to what you like.

All this happens in the background. 99.9% of the people (my guess) would not even be aware of it, and thus their actual views of the world would naturally be skewed to what they already think.

This goes back to the old days when people only got 1 newspaper and that was the sole source of information. That really determines what you think is happenning in the world. The editors picked what stories to run and how they were written so it does change a person's view of the world.

Google / Bing is being that "single" newspaper and determing what you will see when searching. It would make sure you see items which you like which in turn make you think they are doing a good job since you LIKE the results what you are seeing and thus a positive feedback loop.

is to make money

I agree with dogknees. I search for very specific pieces of information and as much as I like my friends their social activities are not going to help me with e.g. finding information on an IP Network related issue. Chances are good that it will simply lead me on a wild goose chase. The idea of using visited page ranking or "I like" ranking is not conducive to any search for detailed specific information. What is lacking in all the search tools are well designed drill down options enabling the searcher to sift from generalised to specifics. With that in place it would make little difference if the social network data was taped as the choice and decisions would be in the hands of the one executing the search.

Google is far and away the most powerful search engine on the web. An increase in the number of web pages its spiders search through merely means an increase in the number of servers necessary to hold the additional retrieved information, and several years ago Google had already had more than 100,000 servers under its control. Indexes on the database that holds the information supplies the necessary search speed, and only an improvement in the indexing algorithm will increase that search speed. That is the kind of scaling which is necessary, and which brought Google to the pinnacle of its success. Apparently Microsoft thought the Google search was better than its own Bing results, but masked the Google results behind its own Bing window dressing, although they deny it.

As far is claiming that social web sites are necessary to scale, that too is ridiculous. I often search for information which hasn't been and usually isn't linked by ANY social page "Like" button, for neither Facebook or Google+ links appears in beneath the ad listings on most of my searches. To link search results to only what folks on Social pages are interested in would be like teaching in school only subjects that are interesting to social gadflies, and would be like running a Formula One racer in only 1st gear. In fact, most links on Social pages were made by folks who found what they were looking for during a Google search, or were passed a link by someone who used a search engine to find it. To claim that a Social page would help "scale" the search is the kind of circular argument that some folks here commented about. The number of times a specific subject is searched for, or linked to on a Social page, may be of interest to demographers, but the search targets are listed in the database only once, for one listing is all that is needed, just like an inventory item needs to be in the inventory data base only once, or a customer in the customer database only once.

This whole article reeks of a Microsoft/Facebook attack ad. It reminds me of the many articles highly favorable to VISTA that were written by supposedly "independent" journalists and influential IT folks just before and during VISTA's initial release. It was only when ONE ethical journalist blew the whistle on the whole sordid affair did we learn that these "journalists" received expensive high-end laptops with VISTA installed on them as a "gift", as the letter that came with them described it, in exchange for favorable articles (they should have been called stories) about VISTA. Only AFTER the bribes were made public were face saving announcements made that the laptops were being donated to charity made. A few, however, brazenly kept the laptops.

Half of Americans believe there are aliens coming to earth and nearly 40% believe there are ghosts and evil spirits. Why would I want their opinion. I'd like to see an internet where I can get scientific "facts" and skip the mumbo jumbo. I realize the word fact can be controversial so what I mean is, things that have been shown by experiment to be true or through careful observation by multiple sources shown to be consistent. I don't think researching something should be a popularity contest. Most people I know operate on belief and ignore knowlege. So they don't get flu shots because they cause the flu, they only drink bottled water, because other water is dangerous, and only use Sea Salt because other salts aren't as healthy. Right now almost any word or phrase you type could get a hit linked to amazon. When friends start recommending sites we will be in even more trouble. By the way, do I really need 13,800,000 results for Ben Franklin?

Considering the vastness of the universe, and the potential for more than one verse, it seems very arrogant to believe we are the only ones out here.

"Half of Americans believe there are aliens COMING TO EARTH..." (My CAPS for emphasis)

If aliens are traveling here just to stomp patterns in cornfields or draw hieroglyphs on the South American mountainsides, then screw 'em. We've enough idjits here already.

Although, it could turn out they feel we're all idjits, in which case, screw 'em
They'd be right, but hey, we don't need no steeenking aliens telling us that

Or it could be an alien prank.

Anything that requires "belief" to accept is a matter of Faith, not science. It doesn't matter what anyone "believes" about the existence, or not, of aliens. The only question of interest is, IF they exist, could they cross the vast interstellar distances to visit us?

It has been shown that the laws of Physics are the same everywhere in the observable universe. Since we've been transmitting radio signals for only the last 110 years, only those civilizations closer than that, if they exist and their technology is advanced enough, could hear us and know we are here. Since travel by a macro object faster than the speed of light is not physically possible, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for an alien spacecraft to travel the tens to hundreds of light years to arrive here. The possibility that they would expend the necessary costs in time, energy and resources to fly all the way here, just to give some drunk from Arkansas a ride to Venus, is about as plausible as an F22 pilot picking up a resident of the Amazon jungle and giving them a ride to Hollywood.

The USA is (was?) the most wealthy and scientifically advanced nation on this planet, yet we could not muster up enough support for either a permanent Moon base or a mission to Mars. In fact, we now lack a significant presence in space or the ability to get there regularly. Our astronauts have to hitch rides aboard Russian rockets in steel balls that don't even come close to the sophistication or ability of our Apollo capsules. The Chinese will have bases on the Moon before we can break our attention away from video games, reality TV, drugs or porn long enough to wake up and realize we've become a 2nd class nation.

"Either there are other life forms out there, or we are alone. Both are mind-boggling."

My apologies for mangling the quotation, but I've managed the gist of the message.

You can read about it, its all over google now.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8901001/Speed-of-light-broken-again-as-scientists-test-neutrino-result.html

All these experiments always mention "sending information back in time"... but that's NEVER what they actually entail.
These experiments NEVER challenge the illusion of absolute time.
No such experiment suggests that the message can arrive BEFORE IT IS SENT, so they are no more time travel than is traveling east over a time zone border.
We all travel through time, at an average rate of 1 second per second
All the so-called "time travel" experiments involve changing that ratio, either making it lower than 1 (approaching zero at the lower limit), or making it higher than 1. Neither constitutes a challenge to the illusory absolute time, which would require negative ratios.

Besides, if you could move at the speed of light, wouldn't you get torn apart because the particles in your body can't move that fast.

but they would become the equivalent of a photon... and if whatever propels the person is traveling along, once they hit "the high c", the passage of time will stop from their point of view... so they can't engage any reverse thrusters or whatever; getting to the speed of light would be a one-way ride.

"We" haven't broken the speed of Light, and the question of IF a Neutrino can travel faster than Light isn't settled science. Those who reported it the first time have redone their experiment and found the same result. It remains to be seen what the cause of the 10% actually is. My bet is that it will be the result of experimental or calibration errors.

Regardless, a Neutrino is not a macro object, and is certainly not something "we" built or can utilize to create a FTL vehicle. C still reigns as the maximum allowable speed for light, or any other object with mass, through a vacuum.

While you're at it, why not argue that the Earth is flat and is the centre of the universe. Both were Facts until someone proved them wrong.

Obviously those among the ancients who could predict lunar and solar eclipses were aware of the Earth's spherical shape and its position in the solar system. Your flat Earth was not science; it was a result of the Dark Ages' obescience to Roman Catholic dogma. The facts never changed, but peoples' right to (and safety in) subscribing to them changed and changed again.

Most of these smarter societies got wiped out by war, drought or famine. Otherwise we'd probably be 1000 years more advanced.

Scaling web search to social can easily bring back such 'facts' as the flat Earth! Anything a preponderance of one's drinking buddies believes will perforce gain traction in web re-search, and grow into what they used to call The Big Lie (the one enough people repeated enough times).
"It MUST be true; my e-friends promoted its ascendency on the internet............"

It could be a new dark age...

that saying anything is true through experiment is a falsehood. Only the second part of what you said is true, through science we can show consistency, never prove anything. And the three things you listed, people believe because people with "scientific backgrounds" are trying to make a quick buck, not because their personal beliefs tell them so, so maybe you're complaining at the wrong crowd. The concept of social search is one of those sound in principle but difficult in execution, because as you pointed out, general consensus is one of those means by which we validate "facts". The issue at hand is not whether we want our peers voting what information is most relevant, the issue is whether the glut of information on the net can be trusted anyways.