To the amusement of many in online marketing this week, Sarah Palin has been caught out commenting and supporting her own posts and content on Facebook with a second, fake account. Needless to say, this is somewhat discrediting. Therefore, I write this post, partly for her so that she may learn and move on to greatness she is destined for. Ahem.

I attended the annual Search Engine Strategies meeting this week and was lucky enough to catch Liana “Li” Evans’ (@storyspinner)session Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics. She talked about how Facebook is not a search engine and rather a connectivity platform. She showed us an example of a search she did for a hotel called “The Mint”. For obvious reasons Facebook does not show the correct, or in this case; desired result.

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The second half of 2010 saw the launch of Google’s Hotpot, a reaction to Facebook’s own location-based social network “Places”, in turn a reaction to the trail blazed by Foursquare. Both companies seemed to be taking a leaf out of the other’s book – Google adding a social element to their search engine and Facebook adding a business element to their social networking site. This post is not related to anything as trivial as a Harry Hill style “which is better…FIGHT!!!” scenario; my interest is purely in the ever changing search environment and how both companies are edging towards a middle ground of ‘social search’, and the inevitability of search becoming a far more  personalised, social activity.

So, first things first; what are Hotpot and Places? Let’s start with Facebook Places.

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