Man verses the Machine

Google and Facebook have been squaring up to each other for about ten years and it's interesting to see how this competition influences their evolution.

They each have a fundamentally different point of departure. Google is a search engine dabbling in social media, Facebook is a social media platform dabbling in search.

Google relies on its algorithms, it has a completely data driven approach. Facebook on the other hand relies on curatorship, wherein people who are networking are creating and managing the content.

But as time goes by, Google is looking more and more at how people are consuming information to determine what they might find useful. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about manipulating the algorithm to surface your content first and Google is in the unenviable position of trying to find the most relevant information for their digital consumers, rather than surfacing the content from organisations with the biggest SEO budget.

Google is now looking beyond metadata, traffic and links to how digital curators manage information during the social network process.

Facebook on the other hand, is looking at using the data it has around social networking to create a useful search facility based on what your friends are posting, reading, sharing, liking and commenting on. Facebook is partially owned by Microsoft and so it has more than a vested interest in enhancing it's search engine Bing as well as the social and search functionality in its M365 modern workplace environment.

Facebook is betting on human curatorship to move towards becoming the ubiquitous application that we turn to as our portal and digital workplace to the digital world. Google, in turn, is looking to enhancing its algorithm using behavioural data to enhance its value to the user.