My last post generated a little feedback that I’ll address in longer form here.
The feedback was specifically about social search (or, my shared memory) as an inferior context for business compared to other contexts where the “interest graph” is more obviously at work—places like Google search or Pinterest or Svpply where people actively demonstrate purchase intent relative to their interests.
Rest assured, I’m not going to argue that social search is better for business than Google or any other proven interest or intent context. But I do think the newness of social search—and the lack of clarity around search paradigms—warrants a closer look before we dismiss its potential.
If I do my job, by the time we reach the bottom of this post, social search and purchase intent will be kindred concepts, distant though they may now appear.
There is no fold
Before we rush to the end, let’s pause for a minute and take a look at the fold. I know, this probably seems like a tangent. It’s not. You’re here. Stay with me.
As I’m sure you know, the fold comes from newspaper design, and its definition is literally what it implies—it’s where the newspaper is folded before it gets stacked on the rack at the local bodega. It’s important because what’s above the fold sells newspapers much like what’s on a cover sells magazines. It’s also a place for expensive ads.
A look at the fold:
Figure 1. At a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, the bottom of the browser—otherwise known as the fold—divides the home page of the New York Times
For as long as the Web is old, the fold has confounded Web site designers. Talk to any who’ve been around awhile and they’ll roll their eyes and then launch into stories about clients or bosses who lived and died by the fold and who forced unsatisfying or truly awful design compromises like this:
Client: “Ok, the logo can be smaller but only if it means you can squeeze that stuff in there, in that last corner of whitespace there, so that everything’s above the fold.”
Fear drove this insanity. A fear that users would never scroll and therefore never see this content below the fold. This content—these About Us links and photos and ads, etc— would be unfindable, invisible and all-but-worthless.
The good news as it relates to Web design is that the mania surrounding the fold has abated of late. While it’s safe to say that things at the top of the page are still what’s most important (ie, emphasized), the scrollbar is no longer a thing to fear; it has evolved into a feature to design for. But this is all beside the point, because this progress is related mostly to Web design; we users still carry the fold around with us as a meaningful divide, as if it’s an indicator of what’s relevant or valuable in our social streams.
Like these social streams are newspapers.
We carry this notion around with us because Facebook and Twitter have borrowed from the design of the news. They also happen to have made what’s come before all-but-impossible to recall. As if now matters most, and everything before now is gone. Invisible.
Worthless.
Like this:
Figure 2. A look at how the fold divides the stream of Tweets on Twitter.com
But here’s the thing. That’s crazy. It’s not like the stuff below the fold on my timeline has been put there by some world-class curator or editor, who’s digested everything and then determined based on business and/or user needs what should be above it or below it.
My timeline isn’t The New York Times.
There’s no digest. No edition. There’s no top, and no bottom. No first page. There’s no fold. There is only flow.
Good though my memory is, most of this stuff lies unrecalled, valuable though much of it is to me.
Which is a shame, because a lot of this stuff matters. It matters because the best of it makes up my mind. It’s the mind I want, filled with the stuff I want to know. These bits are the things I want to remember and use as I move forward in life and at work.
These bits I’ve seen and processed and perhaps not fully absorbed. These countless bits I missed and would want to recall.
Figure 3. The best bits below the fold in my Twitter stream are actually valuable, shared memories worthy of recall
Social search should bring this valuable stuff back from below the fold. It should connect us to the things we knew and know and want to know—these things that we have shared and have been shared with me.
E.g., Foursquare Explore
Lest this seem all-too-theoretical, take a look at what Foursquare has just done with their so-called Explore feature. If you haven’t been back to Foursquare in a while, now may be the time. No longer is it a place that to check-randomly for perks and serendipitous meetings that never materialize; it’s now a place to search and discover what’s good nearby. Like, when I’m looking for a good place for lunch. Rather, when I’m looking for a place my friends have said is good, where I intend to spend money for lunch.
I discovered Explore in NYC the other day, and it was really useful.
Unfortunately, I didn’t grab a screenshot of the interface in my phone that directed me to Pret A Manger near the Bowery. A shame.
Anyway, here’s a preview of the desktop browser interface. Pretty nice.
Figure 4. A screenshot of Foursquare’s Explore social search results, of a search for Food near North Cambridge that my friends have been to.
Our streams. None of us can keep up with them. And not even the brightest among us can remember everything we see, valuable as those things may be.
Social search means that I don’t have to miss the best, most useful stuff just because I was sleeping. Or in a meeting. Just doing something else.
A better memory. Doesn’t it seem like it would be good for each and every one of us? And if it’s good for each and every one of us, it’s bound to be good for business.
What do you think?
