Google's new search engine (aka Caffeine) vs Facebook search engine (aka Friendfeed)
not to mention Bing, Cuil.. etc etc...
4 months ago I wrote about the future of SEO and search engines and as usual web events are faster than anyone can imagine.
In just two days all the web has been flooded by two main news:
- Facebook Acquires FriendFeed and launches a new kind of search..
- the new version of google search engine
This is an "evidence" of the fact that the battle for the next generation of web search has just begun, since Yahoo and Microsoft just made a deal and Cuil is trying everything to have is niche, just to name the mainstream...
Anyway what is UNclear is how to monetize social network... You simply could say ads.. but it's not so straight to do that and facebook is a clear example of that: there is a really low clickthrough and a social network can have huge costs..
So the real battle will be, as anything in our era, about business models. Survivors will be the ones who will monetize faster the upcoming web, giving cool and free services to users -as google did till now.