{"id":529,"date":"2009-03-31T06:27:20","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T13:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/palblog.fxpal.com\/?p=529"},"modified":"2009-03-31T06:46:56","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T13:46:56","slug":"social-search-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"Social Search Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week or so ago, we wrote a post on Social Search<\/a>, and how (we believe) it is different from Collaborative Search.\u00a0 We have also begun laying out a taxonomy<\/a> of the various factors or dimensions that characterize information seeking behaviors involving more than one person.\u00a0 So far, we have listed two dimensions: Intent<\/a> and Synchronization<\/a>.\u00a0 We will continue with two additional dimensions over the next few weeks: Depth and Location.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, we note that Intent and Synchronization already give us enough material to draw descriptive and discriminatory lines between various types of multi-user search.<\/p>\n

Multi-user search can be:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Explicit\u00a0 and Synchronized<\/li>\n
  2. Explicit\u00a0 and Non-Synchronized<\/li>\n
  3. Implicit and Synchronized<\/li>\n
  4. Implicit\u00a0 and Non-synchronized<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Most of our current research at FXPAL involves category (1): explicitly\u00a0 collaborating searchers (explicitly shared information need) and whose search activities influence each other bi-directionally (synchronized).<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, most of the research involving search by multiple people\u00a0 involves category (4):\u00a0 implicit collaboration based on aggregated actions of past searchers that later influence a single searcher’s activities.\u00a0 In this case, the influence does not flows only in one direction.\u00a0 Examples of approaches that belong in Category (4) are collaborative filtering and recommendation systems.<\/p>\n

    With this taxonomy in mind, we can return to our discussion of a term that has become popular in recent months and years: “Social Search”.\u00a0 In our understanding, Social Search belongs in (is a continuation of) Category (4).\u00a0 In social search, people don’t seem to be actively dividing up a task and sharing responsibilities for finding information jointly relevant to a group.\u00a0 Rather, social search (as far as we’ve seen it discussed online and in the literature) is about non-synchronously using information that your friends have found to bias your search results toward information that they have already found useful. Social search is about re-covery and repetition (i.e. propagation) of already-found information, rather than the dis-covery of information new to the group as a whole.<\/p>\n

    An article by Ramana Rao<\/a> at the CACM blog drives this point home.\u00a0 In this article, the author uses light as an analogy for information flow in social search.<\/p>\n

    But, first, let’s consider people.\u00a0 The notion of wavicles<\/em>, which captures the simultaneous particle- and wave-like properties of light, fits somewhat <\/em>to our social existence.\u00a0 We are individual particles and <\/em>participants in wave-like social phenomena that transcend us individually.\u00a0 With this bi-focal lens, you can see how social filtering operates at the two levels and its somewhat-ness as I noted:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Here, Rao seems to be confirming the non-synchronization of Social Search.\u00a0 The actions of the crowd hit you like a wave, and your own search actions flow back as a particle.\u00a0 In social search, you are not directly sharing a search task with other people: influence is non-symmetric and non-synchronized. Moreover, the particles that you create do not necessarily return directly to the same people whose aggregated wave hit you in the first place — the collaboration is implicit.<\/p>\n

    To be sure, there are lots of open and interesting research problems in the Social Search realm.\u00a0 But collaborative search, as characterized by explicit sharing of information needs and synchronized (bi-directional) influence during the fulfillment of those information needs, represents a fundamentally new and different way of approaching multi-user search.\u00a0 Collaborative Search is not Social Search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A week or so ago, we wrote a post on Social Search, and how (we believe) it is different from Collaborative Search.\u00a0 We have also begun laying out a taxonomy of the various factors or dimensions that characterize information seeking behaviors involving more than one person.\u00a0 So far, we have listed two dimensions: Intent and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fxpal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}