The real-time man: Google's Amit Singhal is mining social networks to generate up-to-the-second search results.
Toby Burditt
Social networking is changing the way we find information.
This article is part of an annual list of what we believe are the 10 most important emerging technologies. See the full list here.
How do you parse a tweet? Five years ago, that question would have been gibberish. Today, it's perfectly sensible, and it's at the front of Amit Singhal's mind. Singhal is leading Google's quest to incorporate new data into search results in real time by tracking and ranking updates to online content--particularly the thousands of messages that course through social networks every second.
Real-time search is a response to a fundamental shift in the way people use the Web. People used to visit a page, click a link, and visit another page. Now they spend a lot of time monitoring streams of data--tweets, status updates, headlines--from services like Facebook and Twitter, as well as from blogs and news outlets.
Ephemeral info-nuggets are the Web's new currency, and sifting through them for useful information is a challenge for search engines. Its most daunting aspect, according to Singhal, is not collecting the data. Facebook and Twitter are happy to sell access to their data feeds--or "fire hoses," as they call them--directly to search providers; the information pours straight into Google's computers.
What's really hard about real-time search is figuring out the meaning and value of those fleeting bits of information. The challenge goes beyond filtering out spam, though that's an important part of it. People who search real-time data want the same quality, authority, and relevance that they expect when they perform traditional Web searches. Nobody wants to drink straight from a fire hose.
Google dominates traditional search by meticulously tracking links to a page and other signals of its value as they accumulate over time. But for real-time search, this doesn't work. Social-networking messages can lose their value within minutes of being written. Google has to gauge their worth in seconds, or even microseconds.
Google is notoriously tight-lipped about its search algorithms, but Singhal explains a few of the variables the company uses to analyze what he calls "chatter." Some are straightforward. A Twitter user who attracts many followers, and whose tweets are often "retweeted" by other users, can generally be assumed to have more authority. Similarly, Facebook users gain authority as their friends multiply, particularly if those friends also have many friends.
A study says that we rely on external tools, including the Internet, to augment our memory.
What is the long term sustainability
capabilities of interactive social
networks?
How potentially fortified in
uninterrupted revenue generation
are all social media to the extent
to diminish existing culture of
dependency on its investors ?
Are all customers,otherwise,considered
as networking socialites, aware,
or well informed that privacy in
social networking,is egregiously
compromised in the process of,
and through, networking,like
tweeting, facebooking,myspacing,
yahoo messenging interfacing..etc.
The very moment it is realized
how breach of
privacy through social media
interaction grossly undignify
and reduce human wholesomeness,
and family institution, that
same moment, would inevitably
mark the very beginning of
steady disappearance of social
media networking.
And to our colleagues at
GOOGLE and other sister
technologically ladened
enterprises,you never sit
on the fence and remain
contented with a single
'breakthrough'.
Any 'breakthrough' only
galvanizes and serves as
a momentum toward further
exploration,at the same time,
paying serious attention to
changing trend of technology.
Otherwise, you and your corporation
lag behind competition and
gradually disappear from the
competitive business community,
to the advantage of upspringing
companies; something, no one,and
in deed, no body dares to dream about.
...Just a food for thought...
Martin Atayo
Washington, DC 20013
NSA likes to "drink directly from a fire hose".
Personally I would have thought that the technology behind the image on this page of the man selecting the subject was more important.
'Augmented Reality' is the true future of using computers.
The computer projects information over the image via your glasses. Computer gesture recognition then activates the selected item and the user 'sees' extra information of what they are looking at.
I couldn't agree with you more profquatermass.
I personally think that the current noise about tweets, facebook and the current digital chatter is just that - digital ephemera !
Shakespeare (you know - the writer of Romeo & Juliet) said it in one phrase "Much Ado About Nothing".
Now "Augmented Reality" is another thing. It has the potential ability to enhance the REAL world with data from hyperspace, in real time. It will change our lives !!
As a pioneer in the industry of search engine optimization I'd like to be able to say that a shift toward web chatter to produce quality search engine results is silly...but I can't. I have to say that most of the thought provoking material that I find myself reading from the web lately has been generated by people that I follow on twitter and through other social media sites. It may be bad news for companies looking for easy advertising but I think it's good news for those who truly want their finger on the pulse of the web. If Google or Bing can learn to filter content so that we don't have to 'drink from the fire hose' I'll be both amazed and happy.
have to chuckle a bit each time i see google talking about "realtime" ... when i pressed one of the two leads of google in 2005 about the vital importance of developing realtime results products the response he gave was to ask, "isn't that google alerts?"
well, uh...
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
National Instruments has gathered customer information and data regarding some of the cost differences between building a custom solution versus using NI off-the-shelf tools. Using this data, we built the Graphical System Design ‘Build vs. Buy’ Calculator. The calculator can help show the financial differences between building a custom solution versus buying an off-the-shelf system. This paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of both a traditional custom design approach and off-the-shelf embedded tools.
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1 Comment
Is Sean Suchter talking about Google Wave?
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