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Went along last night to the Chinwag event on Search vs Recommend  billed as ‘competitive or collaborative? chalk and cheese or will they seamlessly blend’?

A really good event. A number of things struck me listening to the panel and some of the points of view from the floor.

• The distinction is really quite artificial – they can happily co-exist as they currently do the difference is perhaps more about destination vs distribution?
• Recommendation and Search engines are both trying to crack the same problem – they’re trying to guess what a human wants using differing kinds of inputs and signals and then provide the human with the tools to make a decision.
• Recommendation sites are basically a bunch of strangers trying to help me find something or make a decision, and search (in Google world) is a bunch of mathematicians trying to guess what I’m looking for.
• Guessing what you will like or want is (in the absence of telepathy) is always going to be a game of probability – Google rules because Google gets it right more often than not when I type a search term in to it’s white box, the other big benefit of search is its universal coverage – Recommendation will never be able to compete with this.
• Recommendation sites such as Revoo, Trusted Places provide added value (where they have coverage) as they often give quantitative and qualitative context, assuming they can both be trusted/not gamed etc..but as the audience on the night suggested on a number of occasions, you trust your friends more – and it was interesting how recommends from Twitter friends were given more weight/relevancy than recommendations from review sites and search engines….so social graph relevancy could provide significant user benefit and utility, IF the hurdles of adoption/ effort are low
• Very few people in the room had heard of ‘Social Graph’ including the Chair – a Google Consultant and expert in SEO/ PPC.

Few other things worth noting

• The Filter is working with Nokia WW on deploying it’s recommendation engine which the CEO described as ‘smart discovery engine for content/entertainment’ using blend of AI, ‘vapour trail’  [stuff you consume on other services]
• Facebook Polls -neat way to gain quick market research. Basically specifiy interests, location, age and sex and then post up to 5 questions. You can set the price you’re willing to pay per response – higher the price quicker the results.
• TubeMogul - site to meta-distribute your videos to all the main video sites (useful if you’re in that game)
• iMeem - apparently massive in US relative to last.fm

The other aspect that struck me was how the language quickly changed during the event from ‘Search’ to ‘Google’ which could be expected given the dominance of Google but the other point here was that in a room of 100 or so people – the majority of them were ‘Google ecosystem feeders’ – SEOs, PPC experts, online media agencies, affiliates etc… it suddenly occurred to me that these jobs/businesses only exist because of Google or rely on Google significantly for traffic etc…Goolge really is a phenomenon. We should all perhaps remember the ‘other benefits’ of Google when you eye with envy their earnings and profits – Google’s probably done more for employment and welfare than most government policies

Oh, and the other thing that struck me was that I first started using Chinwag in 1999 – not only did it make me feel old but seeing all the suits in the room…things have changed, but that’s a good thing!