Don’t worry; I recognise there’s an innate irony in what I’m about to type.
Over the past week, I’ve stumbled across the same story, attributed to various industry experts. Apparently, ‘share’ is replacing ‘search’ as the dominant online discovery vehicle. Everyone from a Facebook VP to a humble PR blogger (and no, that’s not the irony referenced above) is in agreement: it’s the beginning of the end for ‘search’, and the end of the beginning for ‘share’.
But I disagree. Oh, and by the way, that was the ironic bit that I alluded to, given that I found these stories ‘shared’ on Twitter and on Blogs. Share will never overtake search. Not because it won’t be significant enough, but because share and search fulfil similar, but intrinsically different needs.
When you search, you know what you want to find. Your terms might not be specific, but they do exist. When you stumble upon shared content, you aren’t necessarily looking for something, your terms aren’t defined, even if your sources (those you follow, or your friends) are.
It’s similar to the argument that insists social media will be totally dominant, and traditional media will soon be irrelevant. It’s not that black and white. It’s grey.
The future of comms (and therefore discovery) is about integration, not one platform or vehicle’s dominance over another. So it’s not share or search; it’s share and search.
