Just attended a very informative and thought-provoking session on social search at South by Southwest Interactive. My burning question: when and where is the value of social search over static (Google) search?
Panelists Max Ventilla (of Aardvark), Marc Vermut, Scott Prindle and Ash Rust of OneRiot answered, moderated by Brynn Evans.
Key takeaway: There are two types of social search. Searches such as OneRiot are for asking the masses. Searches such as Aardvark are to find an expert to answer your question.
Other points:
- Scott Prindle shared the original seed idea for Best Buy's @twelpforce: originally, Best Buy blue shirts were answering customer-Tweeted questions from their own personal Twitter accounts, on their own initiative
- Where does social search fit in relation to Google? Social search won't overtake Google. Social search answers "but what else?"
- Issue with social search: if people aren't interested in it, you won't find it.
- Determining authority is tricky. It's a combination of who they are, what they link to and relevance.
- From Scott Prindle: 50% of content delivered is from blog, not a microsite. Platforms for conversations win over temporary sites.
- Revenue models for search: sponsored answers (after asking searcher if she wants option of sponsored answer)
- 20% of searches contain subjective words "best" "good" "cheap" --Max Ventilla