An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

This post is the third in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.

Having discussed information evaluation in Information Wants to be Free, this discussion of findability expands via discussion of content creation.  

Findability is Power:

Without findability, the information’s ability to provide and create value is greatly diminished.

Search (and searchability) gets us only partially there. Searchability, in this context, is an attribute of a piece of content (text, video, sound and so forth) that means it can be indexed such that when a user uses a search engine to ask for information, content with relevant information is returned.

For example, I needed my mother’s address and asked my younger brother to email it to me. He sent:

Searchable Email?

The information sought came without a subject, without a city, without a state, without context. Even with Gmail’s search, this particular content is not highly searchable because I’d have to remember my mother’s street, house number, or apartment number.

Great. Even if there were more information such that I could search “mom’s address” or “address MN” and have it return my mother’s address, the information isn’t necessarily findable.  In the above email, I can very quickly find the information I’m seeking. The nformation sought, while not highly searchable, is highly findable.

What if the needed information was buried in a 1,000 word email? Maybe there’s important information there, maybe there isn’t. The email is easy to search, but the information may be hard to find.

Social media tools such as Twitter, Slideshare, and Facebook enable users to find information by helping users connect with each other. While Google, Yahoo and Live Search still serve valuable content, social media tools facilitate connecting, crowdsourcing and community and provide another avenue to augment available information and add more value by introducing other ideas and perspectives.