So the big news this week, aside from the killer new twitter tracking feature in ParsePlz, is that soon facebook and twitter status updates will be included in your next search experience in Google and Bing.

That’s awessome right? HA! Actually it’s good and bad, mostly bad.

The Good

People want, yern for more context, more tasty context. Lately folks have been making all kinds of jabs at plain old every day search in that its not “emotional” like twitter search, and that its not “real time” like facebook search. Just about everyone into facebook or twitter has played around with looking at the real time aspects of getting the fire hose of data on whatever you want to know about a topic, now, right now, this very second. Its a big big tasty fish.

Now for the longest time, that data stream of real time now hasn’t been apart of the Google and newcomer hot shot search engine Bing from Microsoft (which we should note that Bing is actually more Yahoo inspired than a real piece of Microsoft infused enlightenment).

So while it looks like search is about to get richer, and more useful I think the bad parts of search is about to get slapped all over the good parts of status.

The Bad

Search is all about what? Finding what you need? For you and me, yes, to Google and Bind, its a vehicle to sell ads. Advertising people. The big push here is not about getting you and me more relevant data its about harvesting our status, our minds, our mental feed and slapping a billboard on every thought we express freely in our little social environments. We’ve had the pleasure of using the power of twitter and facebook for free too long. Did we really think these playgrounds would be free forever? Nope, cause now your next tweet is going to part of a larger game in search. Your cool tweet about whatever is gonna be harvested, analyze and ponied up in a search result- and in that same space, there will be ads, and soon to be something much worse.

Money motivates people in different ways. Gaming the web is a constant art form. There are scores of people out there that at this very moment are spamming the crap out of everyone trying to manipulate the masses to get ahead. Don’t fool yourself its a huge biz. And sadly because of status now being part of search, I think there’s a very good chance that our favorite spaces to think and express our bit of goodness each day are now totally leveragable for evil.

Your Status is an AdWord

See i think your status is basically prime material for adwords hijacking. Think about it. Your status is now shared and sucked into Google and Bing, you’re part of the bigger game now. In one view, its all nice, you tweeted about “cats” you may get sucked into a “cat” related search. Seems to make sense, so where does it go wrong?

You could manipulate your own tweets to hijack adwords.

Step 1, Do Your Homework. Research adwords to find out which ones are hot right now traffic wise.

Step 2, Use the adword in our status update regardless if its connected to your update or not. Your goal here is to see if you can be listed with other like content in a search attaching to that adword.

Step 3, Take it one step further, include a short url that can’t be deciphered easily into your status update so that people will think your talking about the search term they’re looking for, and think behind your cryptic url could be some sweet discovery goodness.

Step 4, Sell ads on the site you are sending people too. Might as well sell out that space you’re gonna direct fooled traffic to.

Step 5, Make it look like you’re not deliberately trying to manipulate the scene. The final step is to make it appear you’re just on it, into it and so forth.

Step 6, Get ready for everyone else to do the same.

Ok maybe not everyone else but I did joke the other day when this status in search annoucement was made that soon we’ll all be making room for ads in our own tweets and I could really REALLY see that happening now. Because we’re going from a space where our status was between us and our friends/followers to search and the whole planet, and to think that NO ONE will try and manipulate their tweet/facebook feeds to be apart of some gaming of the system effort is hilarious at best. I’m sorry but the web and where its at today, suggests otherwise.

Trends You’ll Likely See Next

With status going out the window and into every search on any search engine soon, your life even though it wasn’t all that private before this even, is REALLY REALLY not private any more, which could lead to a few things:

Privacy Backlash, this annoucement could be the tipping point in the social media privacy blacklash I’ve been thinking about for years now. Eventually our transparancy with the interweb will end, and seeing our own tweets in search may just be the nail in the coffin that does that.

Lockdown. Many of us are unlikely to bail completely on social media but we’ll definitely go into mass lockdown mode. That means we’ll shed anyone who’s non-essential and do whatever we can to lock out our status updates from search engines. We’re likely to see some great twitter de-friending happening as well as we lockdown who all can see our plate of goodness. We’ll shed non-essentials like no tomorrow. The early adopters will cause this initial shift as joe-normal has no idea about the impending infusion of our status with search engines. As early adopters leave/lockdown/flee they will gravitate torward new networks that protect their status and leverage other different powers.

Expert Spam

While there’s a wave of people fleeing the scene, the experts of social media will leverage and cherish this new status in search ability and try to be the expert of everything to promote their brand/biz. Same in biz in general, every tweet/status update is an opportunity now, its not just a way to say howdy, every tweet is an opportunity for search, and as such, needs to be recognize and structured to leverage the opportunity.

Gold Farmers Embrace Twitter and Flood Facebook

Think of gold farmers, they pownce on MMORPG’s and can be heard in every street corner selling their gold, shouting out to everyone all day 24/7. Status spam for gain is likely to occur because twitter and facebook are enabling it. The farmer will follow and will manipulate the scene. This chatter, this noise will drive us away. Just as we collectively learned to ignore banner ads, we’re slowly going to learn to ignore status updates, first starting with ignorning short urls we can’t easily figure out where they lead to. We won’t be fooled. We won’t be anyone’s jackass. We’ll protect ourselves any way possible, we’ll excuse ourselves from the experience if need be if the noise and fakery is too great.

Peaked and Downward Spiral

Facebook and Twitter have a good chance of being potentially peaked out at this point of the game because they are taking our status and merging it search, where as.. i wonder if they ever asked us in the in the first place if we wanted that. This move is driven more by advertising potential and less on real applicable use for the everyday man. While its easy to say more search context is good, its also important to note that it crosses the line in what people currently precieve as transparent and or free. I would wager that 90% of the people in social networks today don’t realize how transparent they are, how profibleable they are, how easy it is for anyone to zip down their fly and get to know them. They just don’t know. But soon.. we’ll all know too well.

Hope?

Now Google & Bing could try and weed out some of these game manipulation issues, but Facebook and Twitter are selling us all out by taking our status beyond where we felt it was. YES you could blockout, but ya know I bet thats hard for people to do. Block out has its own signature, its own little smell, a smell of wait you don’t want to share with us? Its like being called out on the playground for being too good for everyone else. Its a peer pressure mind trick and facebook and twitter know it, and Google and Bing and betting on the likelyhood you won’t block out your status.

We’re probably 9-12 months ahead of what may be. I feel much of what i’ve said here today will come to pass, and we’ll know more the minute we start seeing how status pops up in search, to what degree, how much and more. But one thing is for sure, transparency no more, your everyday data is now part of the biggest most billion dollar game of them all, search and the hive mind of the planet.