Mark Cuban is on a roll today:
I have zero doubt that in the future there will be sliders or some equivalent that represent “the flavor” of search that users will look for. Looking for information about the war in iraq… push the slide rule to the right till you reach Bill OReilly flavored search, or slide it to the left for the Al Franken flavor. THe results are then influenced by the brand you prefer to associate with.
The news is no longer just the news. A holiday is no longer just a holiday. A song is no longer just a song. A search result will no longer just be a search result. We will blow it up into a symbol of something must larger. It wont be of course, but it will happen anyway.
The Web 3.0 – You stay on your side of the web and I will stay on mine.
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One way to do this would be to filter search results through the user’s bookmarks.
ie, exclude search results which are too many jumps away from any of the sites in your bookmarks.
The slider would control the acceptable # of jumps. At jumps = 1, the search would return sites directly linked by sites you have bookmarked.
The flaw in this plan is that sites you have bookmarked will often link to people considered wacky or nutty or just plain wrong, which would ‘contaminate’ your searches with results that are actually diametrically opposed to your point of view.
this is why all the major web firms are offering “history” in search, bookmark services, tag clouds, etc. they want to give you *your* search results. this is probably harder than people think, and will likely not deliver the insights people think they will find. non-public tests of this type of “slider” and history-based search has left me nonplussed.
Yes, I have had the same reaction to history-based search. It doesn’t help me in its present form, and I’ve seen little useful in the more advanced “beta” demos I’ve been shown.