Sure, I’m a child of my generation, but I find it hard to remember a time without Google.
I asked a friend last week ‘does anyone use search engines other than Google anymore’?
They still do (see this recent research from AC Nielsen) but Google is by far the dominant search engine and the first place people many go looking for information. An article in this month’s Wired magazine explored a new type of search engine that offers a completely different model of searching.
Clive Thompson explains:
“For more than 10 years, Google has organised the Web by figuring out who has authority. The company measures which sites have the most links pointing to them - crucial votes of confidence - and checks to see whether a site grew to prominence slowly and organically, which tends to be a marker of quality…But the real-time Web behaves in almost the opposite fashion. It’s all about ‘trending topics’ [e.g. a plane crash] - which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can’t spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.” (‘Live in the moment’, October 2009, page 44)
These search engines seek to make available what people are saying on any given topic at the current time, often with a particular emphasis on what social media channels (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) are saying. The article cites a number of search engines (and I’ve included a couple of others) that have emerged to meet this need for real-time information on trending topics:
It seems that Google is keeping up with, and even staying ahead of the game. Social media website Mashable reported earlier in October on ‘Google launches 9 new ways to search’. If you do a search on Google you will see at the top of the results page a plus symbol (+) with the words ‘show options’. This will provide the following options (click to enlarge):
What are the implications for ministry? A couple of uses come to mind:
- track what people are saying about outreach campaigns such as Jesus: All About Life,
- track what people are saying about your church/ministry,
- track what people are saying about Jesus (and if you’re feeling brave, chime in to address any incorrect views!),
- track the issues and concerns people are expressing about your suburb/parish and consider how your church could positively respond
Can you think of any other ministry uses for this type of real-time search?
