Imagine a search engine capable to predict the real meaning of user’s queries beyond their knowledge gaps, we are not that far.

The spelling auto correction tools could be extended to let users know something that everyone else already knows, beyond the present knowledge of single users.

A search engine used as a knowledge tool, is still a search engine? Can we search something we did not imagine that exist? Google already proved that we can search for something we don’t even know the correct name yet. How deep can you go, Google?

I feel like and elastic rubber band, between my ideas of the free knowledge market and customer’s will to do some business together. Google seems to experience a similar (not yet painful) division between what Google can give for free and his ads.

This month I got more conversions from Facebook Ads than from AdWords. Maybe I’m just a poor marketer, but maybe something is changing.

Update: Maybe a lot of little numbers will give us some answers, just like a lot of lines can draw something that’s similar to a circle, we just have to remember that approximation of reality is not reality, and approximation may change the perception itself of reality (if reality exists, of course).

Adventures in social media web life are driving me far from a respected expertise. The more I dive deep into the web, the more I feel lost and without rules to understand who’s driving and what’s the direction. Cloud computing is going big, outsourcing seems a business… while I have been always focused in learning the more technical skills I could.

Now I’m missing the swarm direction. I wake up in the city every morning and the traffic jam is shouting at my human senses, making me wish a relaxing house in the suburbs. Failing predictions about the next big moves puzzles my mind.

Sometimes mistakes have importance, you listen and try to avoid as possible. Now it’s been a while since I cannot remember even important mistakes, and this makes me feel useless, coward and with less and less to tell. dog is shit table uncle bananas. Even After the deadline plugin is failing to correct my words.

The feeling is that I need another environment to test/try my ideas in the field. Sometimes even Internet seems small.

where is the info stored? in a collective mind or in your friend’s mind? if you know this, you know where to start your search… but if you don’t know that… what is google doing to get to your eyes a unique place where to search for anything?

first of all google is multiplying the spaces, gmail has its own search engine, wave has its own search engine, google search do not gather info from them yet, google docs cannot search between gmail… etcetera.

is this right?

more questions: what’s special in your friend’s mind? their unique way of tagging and manipulating concepts? their life experience?

for both google has its own copies (ok ok… not identical to the real ones but man… we’re working on that). Even if we wanted a copy of our shared experiences with friends google could gather something nice, depending on our connectivity behavior .

time

it’s one of the greatest shifts between google’s on demand service and our friend’s constant streams (do we go on polling with them? or we get each single message on some kind of popup feature? (the popup feature also fits the “where” paragraph) When i’m writing facebook has the best real time feature. (update: google launches its real time search)

dispassion (neutrality)

google’s knowledge compared to our friend’s knowledge filtered by their life experience: google gives me the info to commit a perfect suicide, would a friend do the same? does google have to censor the info request if there is the proof of a bad intention?

and… when I got the info, do I still want to commit suicide? Giving the whole info could have a potential prevention ratio on bad behaviors? A search engine’s neutrality’s border is close to common people’s privacy, and privacy can be broken only at a precise user’s request or after a signed pact. Would a friend wait to see you dead before breaking into your privacy without your consent?

what?

natural language it’s just a part of the issue. do we search for info? or we search for a guide to do things? a question posted on a social network’s wall can have deep answers, just because our friends can see deeper than our first questions meanings, and they gamble a part of their involvement taking action with their words.

google is (or will be) alive. do we want him/her as a friend? do we trust/fear him/her? anyway what’s the sex of google? (lol)

half lies

our friends have ears, when we speak to them we know that it will be recorded and used somehow even against our will. google does not have ears, but every keyword typed for a search is stored and used to know more about the users. should this be more clear to people? (i mean what’s beneath that “privacy” link at the bottom of the page that only journalists and nerds read. There should be instructional flash games that must be played in order to let people know what they are using?) (update: on search engine learning)

culture

when the search engine will be able to give cross-language results? For the moment, the social network has a little solution to cultural gaps, but largely depends on the quality of each own personal network.

article references

• rrr – Finding information on search engines compared with social network
• Thomas Baekdal’s – The Future of Search is More than Social
• Thomas Baekdal’s – Where’s everybody?
• Adam’s – More and more time on social networks

• Mirror’s edge
• Syndicate
• Zak mcKracken and the alien mindbenders
• shadow of the colossus
• call of duty
• prototype

Yo dawg,

I heard you like social advertising so we put an advertising in yo’ social so you can advertise while you social.

Let’s see what i’m talking about:

• everyday I can decide which feeds I want to read (the subscriptions on the reader’s left bar)
• everyday I get shared items from my friends’ feeds (people you follow)
• I can leave a comment on both kind of entries that I receive, and my comments will be visible by who is reading my shared feeds.
• Sometimes I have the need to comment on a contextual item, and if I comment via GoogleReader interface the “share” is mandatory.

now, I usually like the RSS stream of my friends since I find things I could not imagine that existed. For example in this image you see the latest Paolo’s shared item: today I got a very impolite rant with some spoken violence and menaces. Now, I don’t like this kind of discussion, even if they have good reasons, I think that this violent mood speaks beneath their intentions. So I have the need to speak with Paolo but without sharing his own entry. At this moment this is not possibile on Google Reader.

• If I comment “i dont like this kind of mood” my readers will find that item in their feeds.
• If I un-subscribe to Paolo’s feeds I will loose something nice sooner o later
• If I send an email to Paolo (or other private communication) what can I say? That’s not his words, it’s just an item that he liked, for some reason maybe different from what I disliked in the same item, I don’t want to bother him with my opinions about his feed (I usually comment on his blog about his own entries)
• Silence it a very good answer, but well… not very social
• Or I can post it on my blog, that’s out from my feeds and “maybe” Paolo is reading too.

It seems that we will be dealing with many levels of sharing and stratification of the online conversations. Netiquette is not enough.

Things change fast, you need to upgrade systems and even ways of doing things. Your thoughts need to be upgraded once in a while and it’s requested a good flexibility. I’m scared of how fast things are going, and without a fast community that supports my constant learning I’m lost and old.

some ways to stay updated without getting too bored or scared:

• serendipity (read: random -> you deepen the search for things that you like)
• news (read: RSS feeds of cool people)
• social network (read: stay close to open people)
• search engine (read: hope to understand how it’s working and how to use it)

there are many studies on the understanding and adoption convenience for new technologies and ways of thinking. There is many people that sells old things and old ways of doing things.

Sometimes i just feel the need to stay in my silent hole to develop my point of view on the things that i’ll be working on. Those hole-times are extremely unproductive and theoretical. I play, I decorate, I listen to music, I browse and read and lose time on the amazing mass of things on the internet. Then i need to express what i learned, maybe talking, sometimes teaching. The outside communication of internal believings fixes the cool things and lets me understand the problems before i have to experience them on the field. That’s because people’s way of understanding things it’s not linear, it’s sense based. And sense needs to have solid basis.

I’m in my hotel room, naked on the bed with the laptop on a drawer removed from the nightstand. I’m again in Sardinia, my friends sleep in the nearby room and this small hotel features a very fast wi-fi, I got the password from the hotel manager that wrote it for me on a small piece of paper. It’s a character from an old Sega mega drive videogame. It’s not Sonic.

Some days ago Facebook bought FriendFeed, I’m still chatting sometimes with Melody and with Adam and all those things seems so normal, so common these times. I’m not in the mood to get some work done, I should be on holiday and this internet connection also connects me to my everyday life.

On Facebook i have some friends inviting me to join their business groups. Why should i join those all branded + serious empty groups? All these questions have been asked and answered in the Cluetrain manifesto many years ago, and now I only feel that strange lonely internet-mood while in a foreign hotel room.

What’s the cool way to use the internet? I tried almost every forum/second life fail/chat/social stuff/website community on our western internet and? Maybe it will be enough to post some mp3s from the concerts of the next days, share only the stuff that i really care about. But i’m still puzzled. I’m missing so many things in my life that i cannot even count them. I feel in a big mess and trying to get organized, trying to follow a dream that could come true in the next years only means to lose other days of my life on earth with normal people.

Being this overly-connected is not giving much, i think, compared to the daily learning and giving that a “normal” friendship can guarantee. And… my normal friendships today come from the internet of some years ago.

I’m not that kind of orthodox christian, anyway i remember most of the stories from the Old Testament: one of these tells about that guy planting seeds on the stones, and putting seeds in the ground. That’s just a concept to make you understand that there are some places where seeds cannot grow. Every time I walk in the city i feel that all that stories are false. Plants and grass are growing everywhere, even in the space between stones.

i’m still in my empty hotel room, and the simple action of posting on the internet, tonight has the taste of a failure. All those songs of unhappy people are full of ideas far from the reality. The only song with the word “happy” on the lyrics is a cover of “father and son” of Cat Stevens, when he says “I am old, but I’m happy”.

That “but” it’s a small proof that he is lying, at least to himself.