So I Joined the Experiment! I mean, I joined the Google Social Search experiment. I was curious to find out what the hoopla was all about and decided that to understand it first hand, I should participate first hand.

And I discovered that the whole concept is quite simple.

Google now allows you to search updates made by your friends on the various social networks they play in. To see these results from your friends, you need a Google account, need to be signed in to it, and need to be connected to others using that Google profile. Then when you search on phrases, Google will list results that also show updates from your friends on that particular topic you decided to search on?

Confused? Don’t be. Here’s an example:

If you search on “Beauty Salons in Orlando”; your Google search results will also include content from your friends who are in your social networks, if they happen to be discussing or sharing opinions on “Beauty Salons in Orlando”;

Some people are palpitating over “privacy concerns” with such data being so readily visible. However, remember that Google is showing data that is already readily available in a public timeline somewhere. All this search function does is, consolidating the content and presenting it to you in the form of search results.
Brilliant I say because it streamlines the whole search process and provides content that can become more trustworthy since I also see content from my “trusted” network.

Google Social Search will feature content from Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, etc. but not yet from Facebook. That’s because Facebook has different privacy requirements than other social sites. Betcha they’ll come up with a workaround soon, no one’s going to stop Google from dominating the search industry!

Here’s a link that will give you more details about Google Social Search: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=165228

Join the experiment (as Google calls it) by visiting http://www.google.com/profiles!