Will Social Networks Replace Search as Our Primary Source?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has a new round of surveys out measuring how people spend their time online. The interesting takeaway from this round of Pew data is the increasing use of social networks.

In comparison to the proportional growth of email and search, the use of social networks has exploded since Facebook was founded. At first glance, the explosion of social media suggests the continued inflation of what Eli Pariser calls the "filter bubble," where algorithms interpret search queries based on the user's past history and, as a result, present information that confirms past search biases. While the problem isn't absent from Google and Yahoo, which rely on search history to surface bits of information, it's far more pronounced in networks like Facebook and Twitter, where users can selectively choose the pool of friends or sources that shape their daily information diet. Another problem is that what's trending (and therefore, to some extent, what's most visible) in the social space isn't necessarily what matters. As social networking catches up to search as the primary activity of Web-based information consumption, it follows that the quality of information consumed on a regular basis will decline, or that valuable information will be watered down with nonsensical memes and other Internet ephemera. But social media skeptics need not wring their hands just yet. Regardless of the growth of social networks, classic search engines remain on top.