Brynn Marie Evans

I now have a translation of  the dutch article about social search! It was done by a very generous Dutch woman, Joyce Brouwers (formerly at DNV-CIBIT, also on Twitter). Thank you so much, Joyce!

This was really my first interview with a journalist, so it’s interesting to see how some of my thoughts were spun in a certain direction…but others are put more eloquently than I could have said them

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In the future you will Google with your friends

Google is the best friend for anyone with unanswered questions. Although, real life friends can be helpful as well - often they better understand what you’re looking for and they feel obliged to help you. According to scientists of the University of California, search will be a combination of both aspects in the future: search engines that take our social network into account.

Suppose you read the name John Gray in a political essay and you want to know more about this man. When you Google John Gray, you might easily get confused: does John Gray write about political philosophy or the fact that men are from Mars and women from Venus? With a bit of digital detective work the mystery can easily be solved (two scientists accidentally called John Gray). But wouldn’t it be useful if Google itself could understand that you are looking for the political philosopher?

One way to improve search results, is to develop search engines that use online social networks. If Google (or another search engine) could link your LinkedIn profile, Facebook friends and MSN conversations to your search query, Google would probably have known that you were looking for John-Gray-the-philosopher. Because your friends did study philosophy, or your connections have read a book by Gray or you yourself are a member of a political group. Google would then have banished John Gray-the-relationship-expert to the bottom of the search results list.

More relevant results

“The value of social search is that search is personalized,” Brynn Evans of the University of California says. The digital anthropologist does research on online social networking.

“If search engines use information from social networks, results of a network of friends that you trust will bubble up. Because of that trust, the results might be more relevant than conventional search results.” For example, if you search the Web for new music and you would like to be guided by your friends’ taste. Or when you are searching for scientific research articles. An interesting article that is hidden, can more easily be found by Google, by means of an analysis of the previous search behavior of colleagues.

According to Brynn Evans, the search engine of the future will be even more social. Not only will it be possible to use complex algorithms to search through your online social network, it will also be possible to ask a question directly to your friends, or to have a chat with a colleague on the information you are looking for. “Direct conversations from person to person have cognitive benefits and are a valuable addition to the process of information handling,” says Evans. In contact with a relative, people think more about what they exactly want to know and there is more room for reflection, reveals an experiment of Evans and her colleagues.

In a recently published research by Evans and co, a complicated question on sustainable energy was put to students. One group had to solve the issue without using Google, but with help from their (online) friends. The other group of students could only use search engines. These students usually tapped the entire question directly in the Google box. But the ‘social searchers’ first considered the sub questions to be answered. That was because they asked their questions on Twitter and could only use a limited number of words. Therefore they wanted to make sure that their tweet was formulated in such a way that it would bring in the correct responses. Also the fact that Tweets and Facebook posts are archived made the students rethink the wording extra carefully.

Besides Twitter and Facebook, the students also phoned, emailed and chatted. This strategy also provides cognitive advantages: the resulting information is better interpreted and more robust. Moreover, the friends felt socially obliged to give a serious and comprehensive answer – after all you have to help friends. A search engine is not as loyal.

Unpredictable

“At this moment people use their online network already as a helpdesk, despite the fact that networking sites can’t be searched easily” says Brynn Evans. “For example, on Twitter, you have so-called lazy tweets.” According to Brynn we have to wait if we can download a social Google on the short term. There is namely one – big drawback on social search engines: our private data are simply for the taking. Perhaps we do not want that our colleagues find that one exclusive, fascinating article, or we don’t want that our friends know we have sought to Internet pornography. Besides, not everyone feels like answering questions from friends all the time. Evans: “Social search could make our daily lives a lot easier. But how people will react to such services, is unpredictable.” Even though the technology exists, the acceptance of this technology remains work of man.