Search – When It’s Good to Be at the Bottom of the Page

There is one source that I have found to consistently have been more helpful then Google when researching a topic for business or educational purposes – Wikipedia.   Suppose you are researching a topic such as US Health Care Reform or Global Climate Change to better understand what it is all about.  You could Google the phrase, but a healthy percentage of the content that will be displayed as results is from vendors promoting a product that relates to your search term.  Google, of course, makes money by selling keyword advertising and analytics tools that allow companies to improve their search rankings. 

Review of Groundswell

I received a copy of Groundswell in March of 2008, while attending Forrester’s marketing conference in Los Angeles. I finally got a chance to read it last week. Chapter 1 was my favorite of the whole book. E It provides nearly irrefutable arguments about why any company cannot afford to ignore the transformational, groundswell effect that social computing is having on the world. The authors offer great examples of how attempts to remove HD-DVD encryption codes and pictures of Barbara Streisand’s house from the Internet resulted in considerable backlash. “You can’t take something off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.”