Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: What is Search 3.0 anyway? via Alt Search Engines by Charles Knight on 6/11/08 This is the first in a series of posts that I would like to do about Search 3.0.
I have heard a variety of ways to frame that concept, and here is just one of them: Search 1.o is Linear. Strictly up and down. Just like these Google results, you can only go up and down, even if you have 100 results that you want to browse. (KoolTorch.com could show you all 100 in a single glance!) Then there’s Search 2.0 which is two-dimensional. Now you can move up, down, left, and right, as with this Quintura.com tag cloud. (Same query as above) As you explore with your mouse, the results change automatically. (See also KartOO.com) Recently we have moved into Search 3.0 which is obviously 3-D. Here is a new application of Viewzi. You should also look at SpaceTime.com or SearchMe.com. Up, down, left, right, forward and backwards. But is this just “eye candy?’ Not at all. Just consider the usefulness of a one column list of all U.S. cities versus what you can do with a road map, versus a globe. If you want to see - quickly - the relationship between where Richard, Nitin, Peggy, Rafi and I live, I think you would want a globe. A flat map of the world would not cut it - until you tried to make it into a ball. (See the movie Contact!) Can there be a Search 4.0 in this scheme? Search 4.0 would have to add “time” wouldn’t it? Well, is that so hard? What I will be looking for is one of these new 3-D search engines that continuously update the results (as they are discovered or crawled by the engine). Yes, hitting “refresh” does update the results, but it should be automatic - without any action by the user. Comments? *Thanks to Jean-Noël for this tip! Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Alt Search Engines using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
