Search Life Meets Real Life — Tell Me Your Thoughts!
I was thrilled when I got invited to speak at Chris Pirillo’s
Gnomedex event happening in Seattle this
August 21-23. Gnomedex is legendary to me, and to present at it — well, wow!
Plus some nervousness, which I hope this post will help with. I’m looking for
some thoughts on my topic of "Search Life Meets Real Life." Want to help? Then
read on — and comment!
While most of my writing is about search marketing, I’ve been most fascinated
with how search collides with real life or society. One survey from a few years
ago always has stuck with me, how people turned to search for advice over things
they’d used for years — decades - centuries — like friends, family and
libraries. Search engines are our confessionals, our confidants, our trusted
friends that help us.
But sometimes our friends can be scary — like when it’s YOUR house that’s
showing up in Google StreetView, or that feed you thought was private ends up
appearing in a listing, or those photos — well, what happens on Flickr doesn’t
necessarily stay on Flickr.
It can also seem absurd when people want things removed. Really, you want
Google to start blocking houses that anyone walking down a street can see and
take photos of? If so, will StreetView eventually look like one of those
redacted CIA reports? But then again so what if something’s public? That doesn’t
mean people want material to be so easily out there — or that they shouldn’t
have some voluntary controls to remove it.
