Facebook: friendfeed, forging allies and foraging
Search — we seek the digital gold here, we seek it there…….It’s right under our noses and we can’t see it.
This is a most cryptic Twainism which might even have Holmes saying, “Watson, I can make neither heads, tails nor tongue of it! The young woman is a most peculiar cat! Isn’t she supposed to be Alice rather than Cheshire?” Everything will become clear after my wee segment in the documentary, folks.
I am following the FB and FF tie-up with some interest. We have a situation where, only a few weeks ago, Microsoft inked its search deal with Yahoo! Microsoft owns a minority stake in FB (bought at peak price and, seriously, with my corporate strategy hat on? Google’s acquisition of YouTube was a much much more cost-efficient and smarter move.) Plus Microsoft is indirectly hiring former Googlers, the founders of friendfeed. In any case, the blogosphere consensus seems to be that it’s all about that magic word “search” again:
· http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-buys-friendfeed-for-war-with-twitter-2009-8
· http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090810-154010
· http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/
The difference with this deal is that the emphasis is on this notion of “REAL-TIME” search and real-time updates from friends which implies implicit trust. Again, what “real-time” achieves is related to speed — a scalar value — rather than relevance, accuracy or reliability which relate to search orientation and direction which derives velocity, a vector value.
So I have this Devil’s Advocate question, okay?
If I run faster will I arrive at the right destination sooner? Superficially, we may think the answer is, “Yes, of course!” However, it’s a trick question which tests our lateral thinking.
The key part of the question is “right destination”. You can run as fast as Usain Bolt. However, you may be racing towards the Grand Canyon whilst everyone else is headed for Hawaii………….
LOL.
