How Social Media Might Change Search Behaviour

Notice how often social media like Facebook and Twitter is getting into the news lately?  The naysayers say it is a fad, just a phase that will eventually pass.  I’m not exactly the most sociable person on the net (yes, yes ironic I know), but I feel the frequent coverage is a sign that social media is gelling into our lifestyles and will be here to stay.  What this means for businesses is that they have to familiarize themselves with how social networks work and become a part of it as soon as possible.

Just look at social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon or feed aggregators.  Notice how “news” is being defined and voted upon by members?  Information has began to be rated and then shared in social networks.  There’s too much content online, so our natural response will be to give a rating to a piece of information to decide if it is share-worthy.  Similarly, we will be more dependent on our network to filter our news for us.  Take a look now at Google and think about how it works. PPC and SEO.  Now you start to see we will start to change our patterns of infomation search?