Hacker News Reader

Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

Sit up and take note, kids: this is an early sign of a coming change in the tide of how we use the web. A shift from search to social surfacing for content discovery is under way.

Google will surely fight back, and probably be back on top by next week, but the trend is clear. This is not the beginning of the end for Google, but it is, as they say, the end of the beginning.

Facebook works the way humans work: people hear about stuff from the people around them. Google has to do crazy AI gymnastics to determine intent of keywords, and yet still people often can't find things simply because the keywords they pick aren't the "right" ones, leaving them frustrated. But their friends always know what they mean. (Twitter is also very, very well positioned for this kind of ambient sharing)

View on HN

I remain unconvinced that this shift is taking place on the scale you're referencing. Search is a fundamental web activity that isn't mutually exclusive from "social surfacing" for discovering content. Rather, they are complimentary to each other and the main points of differentiation are with branding and marketing rather than any specific shift toward one or the other.

I also think its a bit simplistic to state 'Facebook works the way humans work' as people hear about stuff through numerous other channels than the people around them (ie: nyt.com dining & wine section for a new restaurant).

The 'crazy AI gymnastics' Google is doing isn't for nothing. I actually think those gymnastics are advancing the web in ways other companies aren't. There will always be some overhead to interacting with your friends on the web and those gymnastics Google is doing make the web a better platform for people to interact with (more like your friend).

I don't think the absolute volume of searches will ever decline. However, as a percentage of attention, social surfacing of content will continue to grow.

Take your Dining&Wine section example: that's what they did 3 years ago. But 10 years ago -- and still today -- they're much more likely to visit somewhere that a friend mentioned they visited. The social discovery mechanism is so natural that you don't even think about it as a discovery mechanism, but it's really the dominant source of information for nearly everybody. Facebook and other social networks are only just learning the right way to use that data (and the ground is littered with companies that have failed, even with the same data).

I don't think it means this. I think it means people want to look at pictures of their friends rather than research random things on the Internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com