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Sunday, September 02, 2007
Take one part Dvorak-style sensationalism, one part Calacanis anti-SEO demagoguery, and one part tedious Facebook cheerleading, and what do you get? A prediction that Google is doomed, by someone who refuses to contextualize the whole mess.
Humans do it better? Been there, done that. Agree. Disagree. ??? We're way past that now, surely. We're all working on all kinds of stuff. Google included, surely.
Recommendations by peer groups? Online word of mouth? Preferably, in the context of a vibrant community in a vertical that matters economically and emotionally to those in it. Sure, great, and Mahalo won't be that, any more than many of the other contenders have been that.
Facebook is teaching the world a few things about how to handle peer interactions online. That doesn't mean it's going to be or has to be the platform for all interactions or all intelligent research or all buying decisions -- four years from now, or sooner, or later. I will concede this much: it's cooler than iwon.com.
Remember deja.com (when it wasn't newsgroups but a shopping review site)? epinions? Mobshop?
How about About.com?
Squidoo?
A9....?
Angie's List?
Judy's Book?
Site of the Day?
The Drudge Report?
The Powtoweeken Online Hot Stove Recommendation Club for Good Stuff by Good People to Other Good Folks, average age 44.5 [fictional]?
No, Google isn't any of these, can't do exactly what they said they'd do, either. It's much, much more.
Why does Scoble ramble off into anti-everything-else-Google-does territory in the middle of his weak critique of their search? No one uses GMail? 1. Wrong. 2. Relevance, your honor?
Scoble's incredibly tedious sortie into the world of search doesn't even prove that he's considered the difference between a business model and a few seconds of messed-up REM sleep, which he apparently enjoys while talking into a webcam.
Welcome back to school!
-- Andrew
P.S. TECHMEME!?!
P.P.S. My friend, Jill, alerted me to Scoble's nonsense within the random confines of, yes, Facebook. This proves what?
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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