It’s Local, It’s Personal -- Search Engine & Information Service Trends
1. It’s Local, It’s Personal --Search Engine & Information Service Trends Environmental scan for the Digital Library and Information Systems Team, University of Arizona Libraries Yu Su Information Systems Librarian 8/3/2006
2. “ The growth in blogging reminds us the Internet is fulfilling its original promise about participation.” --Gary Arlen
(This presentation is part of the DLIST environmental scan panel. This part concentrates on what is happening in the commercial search engine world and the various information services they offer. Many trends and concepts shown in the commercial world apply to the library world. The author intentionally stayed away from the “library” perspective in this presentation, not only because the next speaker will focus on library in the new digital age, but also the author believes in the interdisciplinary approaches and the fact that many time solutions and true innovations come from other fields.) Information Services Overview Information service provided by libraries and search engines New technologies and revenue models being tested by search firms Along with fresh promises of personalized ad-delivery through contextual placement Google now fuels approximately 48% of all search traffic, with the bulk of the remainder split between Yahoo and MSN , both of which are currently fed by Inktomi. (Please note: Yahoo will be moving away from Inktomi in mid-April in favour of their own paid-inclusion database.)
The booming of these new websites shows a few trends in information services: Blogger.com: e-publishing, distributed authorship. MySpace.com: virtual community, shared content. Wikipidia.org: distributyed authorship; blurred line between author and audience, speaker and listener. Citysearch.com: localized content. Whitepages.com: localized content. If the library community thinks search engine is not their business (Google, Yahoo, etc.), these newly boomed sites offer more “library” type services.
Internet is all about participation “ The growth in blogging reminds us the Internet is fulfilling its original promise about participation” Gary Arlen, Arlen Communications Inc. The bloom of virtual communities Amazon going into Second Life Library going into My Space Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by 366,332 people from around the globe. Fund raising for the real world in the virtual community: An evidence of the merge between real and virtual world. This image is a photography of a true live event: The fundraising art sale held between July 22-33, 2006, by the American Society for Cancer. This event took place in Second Life, a virtual community where Avatars live and build society. This event raised $40,000 real dollar.
Information service show trends of localization and personalization. Froogle for mobile Top ranked site among the 50 fastest growing websites include CitySearch , a network of local guides focused on cities Increased popularity of sites helping people find local information. “Things having to do with local search are really gaining momentum.” Local internet services lagged behind their national counterparts for years but are finally coming on strong Online newspaper publishes different content according to the time of the day The online newspaper as we know it is turning 10. But despite having had a decade to grow up, many newspapers are still struggling to break their traditional 24-hour news cycle and adapt to a cycleless, continuous-news medium. Google has a personalization team Google Personalized Search (Beta) Get the search results most relevant to you. Personalized Search orders your search results based on what you've searched for in the past. Early on, you may not notice a huge impact on your search results, but they will continue to improve over time as you use Google. View and manage your past searches Browse and search over your past searches, including the web pages, images, news headlines, and Froogle results you've clicked on. You can remove items from your Search History at any time. Create bookmarks you can access anywhere Bookmark your favorite websites and add labels and notes to them. Your labels and notes are searchable later, and you can access your bookmarks from any computer by signing in.
Content creation and sharing Electronic publishing and distributed authorship Top ranked site among the 50 fastest growing websites include Wikipedia, an open reference site jointly edited by millions of people Personal Information Assets Management Google Video We're accepting digital video files of any length and size. Simply sign up for an account and upload your videos using our Video Uploader (please be sure you own the rights to the works you upload), and, pending our approval process and the launch of this new service, we'll include your video in Google Video, where users will be able to search, preview, purchase* and play it. User contributed data, user contributed metadata, user referral, etc.
The Utilization of User Data Customized RSS feed Yahoo Tech Buzz Game Collective intelligence about the future of technology Google Trends “As part of the personalization team, I'm pretty addicted to looking at my search history for interesting patterns. So I decided to go a step further and write a script to pull together some stats about how I was searching. We thought other people might like to see this sort of thing too, so today we launched a Trends feature that gives you a look at a list of your top searches and clicks and other info about your search activity. “To use it, you have to turn on Personalized Search and be signed in to your Google Account while you search. (If you don't have a Google Account, it's easy to create one for free.) Just click the "Trends" link on your Search History page, or go directly to your Trends .”
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Demonstration Google Trends: Vanilla, Chocolate Google Trends: Library, Google
Business practice Google Lab: Give us feedback - Discuss with others Seek for brains all the time. Stay close with your audience. Build the pride for the industry. “ Passionate about these topics? You should work at Google . Send your resume and a brief cover letter to great- [email_address] .”
Summary The commercial information services show us the following trends: -Local -Personal -Collaborative -Small groups drive big change (e.g. Linden Lab) -Distributed application development, distributed software, distribute authoring -Disappearing line between author and reader, speaker and audience’ -Great demand for personal information assets management With these ideas, we are onto the new world. (Next Yan Han will talk about how libraries are going to be like in the new information age.)