Some buzz centered on Robert Scoble's contention that properties like Facebook and human-edited search engine Mahalo add up to a Google-free future misses out on an important factor.
Facebook, Techmeme as technologies destined to upend the Google apple cart in the next four years. He calls these services "SEO-resistant," making the assumption that such a quality equals superior results.
He may well be right about this. Answers driven by an expert should be better than a keyword search, unless of course the expert's answers show up at the top of the search results (perhaps getting there through SEO, too.) Then they are no better or worse than dropping a query into a search engine.
There's more at work with search engine usage than just the quality of their results. Search engines have usability that we like to call the 'television factor.' Dropping a query into a traditional search engine is easy, just type and hit a button.
Getting the most out of Facebook means putting work into it. For the young college set that formed its original userbase, time isn't as scarce a commodity as it is for people even a year or two out of school, or longer.
It's not as easy as hitting a button on a remote.
Criticizing SEO has come easily to many. Danny Sullivan, in his reaction on
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