Now with the recent annoucements of the new platform API’s from Facebook we are potentially looking at a completely new cycle of the Web called the Social Web.  Is this Web 4.0???  I have been trying to get my head around this progression, and I found that if we look at the flow of context and the 5W’s ( What, Where, Who, When, Why) there may be some hint in the overall progression of Search along this evolution.  Maybe the internet as well is in someway following this progression of context?  At the end of the day, the automatic answer of  ”Why is the User really searching in the first place” is a definite challenge that many platforms have been trying to solve with recommendation Answer Engines, but maybe the technology, the web and the timing is just not right to get this perfect yet.    Here is a brief summary of context and the 5W’s from what has been swirling around in my mind.    At this time it really appears that we guiding along the evolution of  ”When”.

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WHAT ( 1995~): What you are looking For? A  strong paradigm from the 90′s from the standpoint of web search and the emergence of vertical search.

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WHERE (2003~): Where are you are looking for some thing?  This strong  paradigm that started with the local directories ( IYP’s or Yellowpages) that basically had platforms with two search boxes.  This was revolutionized by Google and other to majors with one-search box pulling it together.  This evolved quite quickly from the early 2000′s and has become a major modifier for search today.  It is a very strong parameter that will be key to all search traffic on mobile.

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WHO ( 2009~): Who is looking for that item and the relevancy of Social?  For the first time in history Facebook is having its “Google Moment” as described by Michael Arrington in his Article titled- The Age of Facebook.  He described and I quote,

” In a talk a few days ago investor Ron Conway spoke about the explosive growth of Facebook. “They are the universe,” he said. I asked him if we are in the Age of Facebook. His answer was yes. Ron has been investing in startups for thirty years and he has seen the rise and fall of many companies. This wasn’t just idle chatter.

Microsoft dominated the technology world in the 90s on the back of their Windows and Office products. Google was the champion for the last decade after perfecting the business model around search. Both are still huge companies.

But all the momentum is behind Facebook and how they are changing the Web, and our culture.

Last week Facebook unveiled a variety of new developer tools, and new consumer applications are set to be launched in the near future. What’s most interesting about these changes aren’t the debates about whether what Facebook is doing is good for the Internet or not, or how open or not open their solutions are.

Those debates are important but they don’t affect the Facebook revolution any more than debates about Adsense a decade ago affected the decade of glory that Google just experienced. The fact is that Facebook is permeating the Web. Publishers, us included, are clamoring to organize our websites in ways that please Facebook.

Their vision of an open graph of people and things (with Facebook at the center) is becoming reality, and debates by technologists won’t changes that. Facebook is taking over our identity and we are going along with that happily. It will take a new technology paradigm to disrupt what Facebook is doing.”

Facebook’s Pageview’s have now superseded Google’s pageviews to be #1 in North America for Internet Traffic and with the latest Social Web links tied all to users is really demonstrating a power shift to “Who” and the content they create that can be linked and shared in many different circumstances.  Even though the power players behind “What” and “Where” are still evolving, this piece to the puzzle has been added and it makes for an interesting shift in the game of Search as well.

So what is next…… this is where I think we see something very interesting with Twitter and ” When” or there might evolve a new game in town. The “When” Search Engine will evolve that will combine the facets above and create a new momentum.   It is clearly possible for all of the majors now ( Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook)  to move and capture the “When” as it is evolving, but there is again opportunity for others.  Even though new start-ups like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and others have been accelerating with their own index and unique user-interfaces building up  around “the data base of places” that combines What, Where, Who;  the key in my mind for the next wave seems to be clearly “the When”.  It was stated recently by ( could not find it correctly on Twitter- so I guess there still is the problem) about the evolution from Real-Time Search to the Context of Right-Time Search.

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WHEN ( from 2010~2012~): As information and micro-conversations explode in real time,  getting the latest information is one of the paradigms of the latest Real-Time Search Engines.  But the attribute of the Right-Time is something that is evolving to be a key driver in the evolution of Search.

As this has only started and Real/Right-time search is at its initial stages of growth, I did some research and looked at all the different Right-time Start-ups and companies listed in Crunch Base.  Here is a list of all the Right/Real-time search engines they list today.  Besides the work going on with many of the majors there are approximately 50 start-ups listed.  They are listed at the bottom of this article in Alphabetical order.

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WHY ( 2015 and beyond):  To me this final piece makes the ultimate Search Engine.  It knows “Why you are searching and can give you the right answer at the right time, at the right place, with the right links to all of your social graph and friends- the Who…..  I believe it will take years before we see this working perfectly, and it might evolve around the time linguistic enablers are in place for the perfect Voice Search.   This intelligent six-sense and search will then complete the picture of search and the 5W’s.

-  End of Post-

[Reference:  The Real and Right-Time Search Engines battling it out today]