Search engines: let in the experts (just like Topicle)
Written on March 11, 2008 – 3:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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As you might have noticed I’m writing a lot about search these days. In another post, I gave an explanation for that: people want to find similar people. Yet after a few days of reading about search and talking to search experts, I think I can broaden the reason somewhat: People are looking for two sorts of experts.
First of all, those with similar interest can be considered experts, since they know a little what you’re like and therefore can help you find the right stuff on the web. So that’s why a search engine like andUnite - that matches search terms - makes sense.
Second, we want professionals to scan whether the information we find is correct or not. Andrew Keen already warned us in his book ‘The Cult of the Amateur‘ for the damaging effects of false information - caused by the wisdom of crowds - can have. And let’s face it: the web is still really cluttered. Try finding a decent hotel with Google, I wish you all the best.
Newsweek published an excellent article about this last point this week. Jason Calacanis, founder of the human-powered search engine Mahalo - that will make finding that hotel easier with a Top 7 list - told Newsweek: “The wisdom of the crowds has peaked. Web 3.0 is taking what we’ve built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined.” (more…)
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