A piece of writing from earlier this year (1st April). Still believe there’s a lot of room for innovation in this area and want to keep it at the top of the pile.
screenshot from an early prototype combining Facebook images with Search. Some months later, the Image Search team really did launch such a feature.
Background
As consumer awareness and device capabilities have come of age, the trend in Mobile apps have converged towards hybrids of location based services and social networking. The rise of FourSquare? and Gowalla in the mainstream market only added more fuel to the fire.
Though not obvious at first, this trend has the potential to take Mobile Search to a higher stage of evolution. During the past few years, the uptake of search on mobile devices haven’t been as significant as some might have hailed. While new smartphones come pre-loaded with Search appliances and apps, usage rates compare pale to their desktop offerings.
There’s no denying that in general, user experience of mobile search services leave a lot to be desired, especially when the majority of them were designed to be straight ports of the web search experience. The problem is that the user interface of web search, with typically a text box and a listing of textual results, geared towards offering the user an immersive experience, where he or she is given the illusion of scanning through a long list of related web sites. Due to constraints imposed by hardware, network connectivity, and physical convenience, mobile users rarely find themselves needing to engage in such an intense and immersive search session. It is therefore hardly surprising that keyword based mobile web search has failed to catch on – there just isn’t such a great need.
That’s not to say mobile users lack the intent of searching and discovering information. On the contrary, people on the move are perpetually at the forefront of receiving new data (e.g. running into new people, going to new places, new shops being opened in the neighborhood), and very often find it immensely useful to have additional information at their disposal (say, a guidebook) to help them make sense of the new data. While most people would keep a copy of a local businesses directory in their cars, few consider it an appropriate source for dining advices. When it comes to asking for personal suggestions, nothing beats calling a knowledgeable friend.
Feature Ideas
- Delivery of information streams relevant to a user’s social network AND context (time, location.etc.). For example:
- Photos uploaded to Facebook by a users’ contact list.
- New contents and links posted by a users’ contact list in Twitter and Facebook.
- Search/Filtering functionality provided.
- Supplementary data extracted from social network streams. For example:
- Which one of my friends have come to this restaurant and when? What were their comments?
- “Find me a drinking place nearby where Stephanie and Becks would hang out, but not Vicky?”
- Any special unlocked Foursquare venues nearby?
- Forms of input
- De-emphasize the classic search box and listings UI. Use location, direction, time, data mining.etc. to direct the search experience.
