As part of our ongoing exploration of the recent changes to Twitter, Facebook and Google, we asked Zemoga’s Head of Research Russ Ward for his take on Google’s new search practices, Here’s what he had to say:

Well it is no surprise that Google has created a great deal of discussion over its new “Search plus Your World” functionality within Google +.

The chatter all over the web includes concerns over privacy rights, security and the reactions by Twitter and how it may work with Facebook. Quite frankly everyone seems to be reticulating the same news and speculation, but how much of a leap into a new world of search do these new personalized search features afford.

So lets step back and look at what this new Personal Results button really does. From Google + a search will simply yield the usual keyword based search result – so no new functionality there.

Then, by clicking on the Personal Result button a new set of results are added based on the keyword relevance of your search to keyword data indexed within the information Google knows is within your personal data either in Circles or other public data Google has matched to you. The paper clip example Google is using shows this relevance and the simple result.

In real terms this is simply an automated advanced search with results you have most likely seen before.  While being personal in nature and clever that it relates keywords to you personally, there is no real innovation here and no real ground breaking improvement to provide useful information.

But it’s what is not happening here that makes this function less useful? By default as Google is NOT scraping Twitter, Facebook or other third party social network, therefore the content presented is naturally biased by Google’s search algorithm and whatever is held in the users Circles account. It is from a search relevance perspective that this means that the Personal Results function can only provide limited results.

To put this to the test – I ran a search of my own (as a matter of disclosure I do not have any content in Google Circles) and my search results do not change in any way. This is the case with or without the Personal Results button active and occurs no matter what I search for.

The take away here is that there does not seem to be any real technological or search advantage here. Until Google gets access to other social media platforms in which you participate there is nothing more to be said because it is IRRELEVANT.

By Sven Larsen (@svenplarsen)

Continuing our weeklong theme, SOCIAL TIMES has a writeup about Microsoft’s full page ad in the Wall Street Journal attacking Google’s privacy policies. This could get nastier than the Republican primaries!

By Sven Larsen (@ Sven Larsen)

We’ve written so much about Social Media Week – Bogota on this blog that we would be remiss in not mentioning that the original version of the event is about to happen in our other hometown, New York City. Toby Daniels and team have put together what looks like their best event yet. Just check out some of these keynote speakers:

Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation of Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Alex Bogusky, Co-Founder of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and founder of Common (we’re looking forward to seeing Alex again after meeting him at the pSFK/Al Gore event)
David Eastman, CEO of JWT North America
Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
Doug Rushkoff (who wrote one of our favorite books of the last couple of years, Life 2.0)
Elisa Camahort Page, COO and Co-Founder of BlogHer, Inc.
Jay Walker, Chairman and Curator of TEDMED
Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn
Scott Belsky, CEO and Co-Founder of Behance

and that’s only a partial list of the Keynote Speakers!

You can find the full event schedule for New York here. And don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of familiar faces at these events as well. There’s nothing the Zemoga team loves more than hearing from the best and brightest minds in the worlds of social and digital media so we’re already filling up our calendars with the events we want to attend.

See you there!

We were going to write a post about why we’re opposed to SOPA and PIPA (despite being in the intellectual property business ourselves). But then we found out that the brilliant Clay Shirky had recorded a video on the subject for TED. Clay argues the case much more eloquently than we ever could so pleae take a moment to watch the video (and then contact your local representative if you agree with us and Mr. Shirky).

Why SOPA is a Bad Idea

By Russ Ward (@russcward)

Is it irrelevant?

It is no surprise that Google has created a great deal of discussion over its new “Search plus Your World” functionality within Google +.

The chatter all over the web includes concerns over privacy rights, security and the reactions by Twitter and how it may work with Facebook. Quite frankly everyone seems to be reticulating the same news and speculation, but how much of a leap into a new world of search do these new personalized search features afford?

(more…)

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

By now, you’ve all seen the Google blog post announcing Search, plus Your World. And while we’ll have a more thorough exploration of the ramifications of it from our resident metrics/analytics and SEO guy Russ Ward coming your way, we thought we’d touch on a few points about social in your search before the technical speak comes your way. (more…)