Social search: useful tool or time waster [Archive]

Social search: useful tool or time waster ? Karen Blakeman, http://www.rba.co.uk/ Internet Librarian International, London, 15 th -16 th October 2009 16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Photo: Google Street View This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Why social search?
Publican hiring bar staff using Facebook to pre-screen candidates
Student used YouTube to find information on the life cycle of the Duck Billed Platypus for an essay
Business students assignment on advertising history of Cadbury’s Crème Egg and Dairy Milk – Youtube
Conference speaker used Twitter and Facebook to find a Norwegian translator for his presentation
Essential part of reputation monitoring for all organisations
Essential when researching organisations, competitors, etc
What’s happening at Internet Librarian International?!
16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Google Caffeine http://www.comparecaffeine.com/ 16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Google “Show options” 16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Firefox - customise Google results 16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.co.uk/
http://search.yahoo.co.uk/ http://search.yahoo.com/
May start using Bing web search next year
Now includes options to limit search to selected networking sites

123People.com
Searches
image sections of major search engines
Flickr
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
blogs
web
videos
news

The People Search Engine – Whoozy.com 16 October 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Do social media, “real-time” search tools work?
Phil Bradley’s blog for examples and reviews
http://philbradley.typepad.com/
Here today and gone tomorrow
Don’t always work on all of the services they claim to cover
Superficial coverage
but you may only need a quick overview
For serious research learn how to use individual, specialist search tools or search the service itself

For example: searching Twitter and tweets
Searching public tweets
http://search.twitter.com/ , http://www.twazzup.com/
Google advanced web search and use site search on twitter.com
Use your Twitter client on your desktop, laptop, mobile, iphone
e.g. Tweetdeck, Seesmic
Review: 8 free Twitter clients for better tweeting
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138067/Review_8_free_Twitter_clients_for_better_tweeting?taxonomyId=16&pageNumber=2
Tweepz.com - Twitter People
Phil Bradley's weblog: Twitter Search - 20 alternative search engines
http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2009/03/twitter-search-20-alternative-search-engines.html

Potential drawbacks
Users may not appreciate limitations of social media and electronic information in general
Assumption that today’s technologies have been around for ever
original TV coverage of the storming of the Bastille
podcast of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address
photo of the baby Jesus with Joseph and Mary
Accuracy and authority of information
mis-information, intentional or accidental has always existed
social networks/web 2 can correct wrong information
Twitter campaign to correct mis-reporting by UK newspaper on cervical cancer vaccination and death of a teenager

Social search: useful tool or time waster?
You go to where the conversations are, where the chat is, where the buzz is
It is where people feel comfortable asking questions and sharing information
It is where an increasing proportion of the population “grew up”
You can’t ‘gag’ social networks
BBC NEWS | Politics | When is a secret not a secret?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8304908.stm
For serious research, social search and Web 2.0 are not optional extras - they are an essential part of a search strategy

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Social search: useful tool or time waster [Archive]

by Karen Blakeman on Oct 16, 2009

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Social search: useful tool or time waster [Archive] — Presentation Transcript