I think you make some valid points here and your concerns certainly have basis in reality, but I think you have overlooked one very important fact: search engines like Google and Bing must learn to filter out the spam in order to continue to provide quality relevant results.
One of the unique things about search engines harvesting content from Twitter and Facebook status updates is that these networks already have built-in metrics for gauging source reliability that have come about organically. If someone on Twitter has a high follower to following ratio, then they usually are providing a value that goes beyond any superficial mutual-follow mentality. Being retweeted by others is often another sign that the content (and/or link) you provide is valued by the user community.
Can these traits be faked? Maybe, but a false account would have real trouble matching up with all of the metadata that I am sure is available through Twitter's firehose feed (date of signup? rate of follower growth? number of tweets per day? reply rate? who knows what else?). As easily as I can look at a new follower's profile and decide whether they are worth my attention (or a block), it sure seems that search giants like Google and Bing will be able to filter the junk out from the good solid content.
Because these social networks are relational (and those relationships can be measured and quantified much better than relationships between web sites) I believe the search engines will be able to distill a lot of true value from the stream. I'm already encouraged by what I see in Bing's Twitter search results even though I don't know exactly which factors they are using to gauge value, I am impressed by their ability to pull just a few high-ranking tweets for each trending topic. I am sure they will do the same with all search terms.
I'll be interested to see if and how it has an effect on network behavior, but for now I'll keep doing what I do and let Google and Bing worry about doing the thing they must always do to remain a search leader: weed out spam and point to content of actual value.
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One of the unique things about search engines harvesting content from Twitter and Facebook status updates is that these networks already have built-in metrics for gauging source reliability that have come about organically. If someone on Twitter has a high follower to following ratio, then they usually are providing a value that goes beyond any superficial mutual-follow mentality. Being retweeted by others is often another sign that the content (and/or link) you provide is valued by the user community.
Can these traits be faked? Maybe, but a false account would have real trouble matching up with all of the metadata that I am sure is available through Twitter's firehose feed (date of signup? rate of follower growth? number of tweets per day? reply rate? who knows what else?). As easily as I can look at a new follower's profile and decide whether they are worth my attention (or a block), it sure seems that search giants like Google and Bing will be able to filter the junk out from the good solid content.
Because these social networks are relational (and those relationships can be measured and quantified much better than relationships between web sites) I believe the search engines will be able to distill a lot of true value from the stream. I'm already encouraged by what I see in Bing's Twitter search results even though I don't know exactly which factors they are using to gauge value, I am impressed by their ability to pull just a few high-ranking tweets for each trending topic. I am sure they will do the same with all search terms.
I'll be interested to see if and how it has an effect on network behavior, but for now I'll keep doing what I do and let Google and Bing worry about doing the thing they must always do to remain a search leader: weed out spam and point to content of actual value.