Zite, the personalized magazine app for ipad is pretty cool. They aggregate personalized content from a web crawl, the same way content is aggregated in the indexes of search engines like Google and Bing. Zite then displays articles in reading mode, which makes a much better reading experience. However, the real interesting feature of Zite is the user’s ability to personalize their content.

So how can you customize your Zite content? Let me count the ways.

First, you can thumb-up or thumb-down the article itself. This is telling Zite whether you like the content of the particular post. The analog here would be +1 in Google or “like” in facebook.

Second, you can select “get more from.” To me, this is really the game changer. You can request more content from a particular source (website/blog) or a specific author.

Third, you can request more content on a particular subject.

And of course, sharing through Zite is seamless.

So what does this have to do with search? Everything.

For better of for worse, search is getting much more personalized. With the addition of social signals into algorithms, the recommendations of people you know are gaining visibility in search engine results pages. While not prominently advertised to the public, you can actually already do a lot of personalizing of your search results through your browser. It is my guess that this is about to change greatly.

If you think about Google Co-founder Larry Page’s description of the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want,” then the Zite model for search seems even that much more likely.

If you think about it, Google tries to mathematically decipher relevancy & popularity to deliver you results. However, as they would freely admit, they haven’t come up with the perfect algorithm yet. Which means that they must make a choice. They can either stick to their “mathematics only” way, or ask users to help them understand what it is that they want. And really, they are already doing this (think user data, social signals, etc).

And so, don’t be surprised to see similar functionality on your search results page. Despite the potential filter side-effects of personalized search, it seems to me that this is the next logical progression for search. Besides, don’t we already change the channel, unfriend, unfollow, and block those that are feeding us messages that we don’t want? Furthermore, the filter effects of personalized results assume that search engine results are somehow “pure” which is completely inaccurate. All algorithmic search engines have popularity biases cooked right in.

I look forward to the ability to get more search results from my favorite authors and websites. How about you?

Google's Larry Page

He sent out a company-wide memo last Friday, alerting employees that 25% of their annual bonus will be tied to the success or failure of Google’s social strategy in 2011.

Now there is no denying that Google has, to date, essentially failed at “going social.” But it hasn’t been from lack of effort.

To me, the social web is the next natural evolution of the Internet. In the early days of the web, most people were lucky enough just to be able to access the web, let alone publish on it. In the last ten years, that has completely changed. With social media, almost anyone can be a web publisher. Which means, a whole lot more signaling information for search engines.

Will early adopters have a competitive advantage? Well, maybe. It really boils down to how people are using their social media “street cred.” Just like other forms of communication, some people will learn to harness the power of social media & networking platforms much more quickly and effectively than others. For those early adopters who see the long-term value of developing credibility in their profiles, much like early website adopters, they are likely to enjoy a significant competitive advantage in terms of online reputation. On the other hand, those that see social media as yet another billboard, will destroy their social credibility and find themselves questioning the value of engaging online.