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An article by Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics questions whether social networking sites might ultimately "kill" search. In the article, Derene refers to a venture capitalist who has predicted that Web 2.0 will ultimately be the main way that people use the Web and the things that people search for will be handled through social networking sites instead.

The article inspired a lot of commentary, both in agreement and ridiculing the concept that social networking sites could serve these functions. I found a lot of the comments interesting -- some referring loosely to ideas that have been tossed around in discussions of "semantic web," like searches that can figure out your intent based on your personal info rather than merely by the words you type into the search box.

Other commenters point out that people don't use search sites and social networking sites for the same purpose, and that people would not be likely to turn to a social network for the type of information that the usually use Google for.

Definitely an interesting discussion. What do you think? Post any comments here.

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