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Sometimes I think social search may be one of those things that sound good in theory but don't really add a lot of value in practice.

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I would have to agree. If you consider what the average facebook user looks like social data will be little more than white noise, especially when you consider how easy it is to game.

Google's record on this sort of thing is to try it out for a week, then pull it. I'm guessing they don't have much faith in the concept, but are willing to try anyway.

That's completely wrong. Google's had social search since 2009. It never put it out there for a week and yanked it.

The opposite is happening here. Google rolled it out, then just kind of let it sit -- no big huge improvements, and it was hard to find. Now they're putting much more faith into it, making it more visible.

I meant user-controllable results like searchwiki.

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