Robert Scoble on Search
So we celebrated our birthday a couple of weeks ago and posted some views on the search industry from some of our friends. We thought we were done, but we'll make an exception for Robert Scoble. ;-)

Q1. What search engine industry development/announcement has surprised
you the most in the past 12 months?

Seeing Microsoft buy Lookout was suprising. But, most interesting over the past 12 months is how fast the new search engines like PubSub.com, Technorati.com, and Feedster.com have changed my search expectations. They opened up a new search category: syndicated searches. You search on them, just like you do on Google, Yahoo, or MSN, but one difference: you can subscribe to the search results. I wish all the search engines had that feature.

The fact that these guys only watch the blogosphere makes them useful for marketing reasons too.

Q2. What do you think will be the most significant development over the next 12 months?

I think desktop searching is going to be more important. Tools like Lookout, X1, and systems like Longhorn's WinFS will change our search expectations quite a bit.

The RSS industry is still trying to figure out how to put advertising into feeds as well without turning off subscribers. I'm looking for someone to show us out of the forest on that one.
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |