Jascha's Blog

The Industrial Revolution gave rise to the middle class’s social equality becoming comparable (albeit within the often harrowing conditions of the then modern-day workplace) with the then ‘noble’ class. In the same way that the technological advancements led by textile manufacturers, metalurgy, and mining distributed the financial juices for social mobility to a greater number of people, we find ourselves in an oddly similar pattern of revolution empowered by social networks like Twitter, Facebook and their peers.

The information revolution lead by Google, Yahoo!, & Microsoft has made a limited number of sources king by defining social equity largely through the empowerment of ‘link juice’, aka SEO. When we want to find something we ‘Google it.’

Social networks have introduced a new source for social equity, and what is arising from that equity is social equality. They empower the middle classes to communicate with the masses, so to speak. Last week’s news of the paid inclusion of Twitter feeds on Google and Bing searches could change the effect of the kings of information on social relationships for good. Just as we now talk about the importance of link juice (and often complain about the tactics people use to pursue it), will we soon speak of “Tweet juice”?

Will this force us to question the authenticity of our social relationships? There is an organic quality to the growth of social networks, but the lure of Tweet juice injects an unprecedented level of self-interest into the social web. How will the nature of our online social interactions change when we must wonder whether someone is following us earnestly or whether they’re using us for our Tweet juice? Will Tweets become a commodity, with hash tags and handles bought and sold in the social media marketplace?

Will this, in other words, mark the rise of social capital?

Last week at the Web 2.0 summit, Microsoft and Google announced the integration of Twitter’s search results into their search streams, effectively pushing their customer experiences closer to real time. While on the surface this seems to be a benefit for users of their services, the preceding weeks surfaced some confounding positions by the two software juggernauts, namely the submission to pay Twitter for access to their information and, therefore, mine (and yours if you use a non-protected Twitter account).

Clearly there are multiple angles one could take in response to this movement. I for one am still on the fence as to my position…so let’s review some of the gestating ideas:

• Google has fought copyright lawsuits in the past for indexing content. Now they’ve set a precedent and demonstrated that they’re willing to pay to index content. This could potentially be leveraged against them in future or ongoing lawsuits.
• Microsoft, on the other hand, has paid to index content in the past. Is this another sign of Google chasing the tail lights of Microsoft, which seems to be more prevalent these days?
• Conspiracy theory angle: Google wants to digitize and tag all the world’s information. This is another step down that path. Should we expect to see Google pay to index Facebook, MySpace, etc.? What are the implications of having the world’s social data at your disposal? Also, does indexing social content devalue the ‘closed’ social network over time?
• What will including paid content do to the integrity of search rankings? If you’re paying to index content, you’d want to make sure it was delivered enough to justify the purchase, right?
• As Twitter data makes its way into direct search results and also starts influencing ranking signals, SEO success will become inextricably linked to Twitter success (a practice that Justin calls SSO). Should we expect that Ashton Kutcher will become the king of SEO as he current sits atop the largest twitter following? If so, what impact will that have on his relationships?

As we each grow our own social influence through creating content on our blogs, Facebook, Twitter and creating a following within those channels; are we seeing the growth of social capital as a new means of wealth in modern day marketing? What are your thoughts?