So one of your friends in your social network has Checked-In at the newest French bistro downtown. Along the way he uploads a photo of the lamb shank he was having and in between he would make remarks of how easily the meat falls off from the bone or how the manager has given them complimentary glasses of wine.
For some people, they might think this is a form of bragging. Which may be true, but it’s also the newest wave in online lifestyle called Social Discovery.
Vox populi.
Technically the more philosophical sister of user-generated content, it’s a rising way of life on the internet. As opposed to search engines providing you with your desired results, there’s more trust factor when it’s your friends, acquaintances or ordinary strangers who give you an idea where to go, what services to use, or basically doing the search engine for you.
So maybe you are turned off by the bragging style of social network Checking-In, not to mention the food critic way he would describe the food, but admittedly more people are swayed by his opinion than by the advertising this French bistro has come up with.
In fact, according to Jennifer Peck, director of Banjo, “about 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are linked to user-generated content.”
And that’s simply social discovery. It may be safe to say it’s the direct descendant of vox populi.
Google, Bing and Facebook
It is because of this that the big search engines Google and Bing are seriously considering integrating results that are drawn from user-generated content. So as you’re searching for a hair salon in your Scottsdale neighborhood, what may come out are other Scottsdale residents recommending this trendy Japanese hair salon or a herbal hair treatment salon that somebody used and was raving about. It can also include photos of their nails being painted with design or tweets of how they’re loving the shampoo massage.
As of now Bing has already incorporated this element. In an experiment, Dave Copeland, of ReadWriteWeb, got on Bing through his Facebook account and searched for “Boston Marathon Training Plan”. Bing rolled out results of his friends that have mentioned his keyword query.
“Indeed, three of the five people displayed have run the Boston Marathon at least once, and one coaches charity runners…Not bad.”
Social discover eruption.
Social networking goings-on have been on the rise more especially this past year. Although it has been around for quite some time, social discovery became more prominent during the South By Southwest festival in March 2012. Now more than ever the concept is what’s popular, what’s trending and what’s being talked about.
As of now, Facebook is also looking into implementing local social discovery, which it has ignored for some time. According to their chief operating officer, it’s because not all local shops have Facebook.
Copeland wrote, “Facebook can entice them to set up shop on the social network-which, after all, is easier than setting up a custom URL and homepage-the company will have a good shot at covering local end of social discovery.”
Still social discovery is a quiet rumble waiting to snowball into a historical archetype. In fact, right now we’re thinking of going for a Vietnamese massage 20 blocks away that someone has just tweeted about. There’s even an Instagram of their snazzy Jacuzzi.
img c/o pixabay
