234) Social vs. Search

Last night, Mark Zuckerberg appeared on 60 Minutes for the second time in his career (portions of the interview above - worth watching). Interviewer Leslie Stahl (I'm sorry, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people who clearly don't use a platform try to analyze and talk about it. Her intro: "If you have a Facebook account, you've probably reconnected with an old pal, shared photos with family and gotten advice from your friends on what to buy and what to read. It's pretty likely you logged on today." UGH.) delves into Zuckerberg's ambitions for the company, privacy issues, The Social Network and the man behind Facebook.

Whoever that may be, viewers were treated to a confident Zuckerberg who came off as likable, humble yet ambitious, and articulate (and is it just me, or has he been lifting weights?). All in all, a huge score for Facebook PR.

One thing that stood out to me was Leslie's remark about Facebook and Google battling for dominance when it comes to search. In a quick demo, she explains that while Google brings up information, Facebook brings up mentions of your search term in people's status updates. For now, these seem to be two different and necessary sides of the search coin. We want the straight up info, but we also want to hear the general public's and especially our friends' reviews.

At this point I don't think anyone really equates Facebook with search (yet). As Zuckerberg points out multiple times, Facebook is capitalizing on the macro shift towards social, predicting that products and brands will rebuild themselves to incorporate some social aspect. Because, if we can do something with friends, then why would we want to do it alone? (The snarky answer, of course, is searching for a socially unacceptable phrase - that we would want to do alone.)

I'm always fascinated by the chicken and egg nature of our growing socialness. Have we always had this inherent desire to share, and have just in the last however many years experienced a Renaissance of tools to do so? Or is it true that we are becoming more social than we used to be? And if so, why?

(Mini aside - This morning, I checked Weather.com as I always do and saw, "Flurries" in the forecast. Flurries as in snow. Long story short, I was completely overdressed today, making it blatantly obvious that I'm from the west coast. How so, Natalie? you might ask. Was it the sleeping bag-like down jacket you were wearing? Or maybe the Soviet Russia hat? Or perhaps the tights worn under your leggings gave you away. Meanwhile, New York women strutted around in their moderate length peacoats, tights and boots. I kept wanting to ask them whether their legs were freezing.

Someday it will get cold and miserable enough for my vanity to succumb to my need to be warm. Today wasn't that day.)