Search engine technology for fun instead of productivity

Heck yes. Let’s make screwing around on the Internet more efficient.

Searching for Fun:

But this attitude [search for sake of productivity] ignores a growing portion of searches: those performed when people… want to discover something entertaining or amusing…

New research suggests that many people use search engines this way, and their behavior is fundamentally different from other searchers’ behavior.

To best serve those people, [Max Wilson] says, companies and researchers should look for more ways to provide welcome serendipity through search.

[David Elsweiler] says people seemed intent on producing a certain mood: They used such terms as “interesting,” “entertaining,” “distracting,” or “challenging” to describe what they sought. “These are very subjective descriptions, and search engines are not good at dealing with this kind of task,” he says.

Robert Stebbins, who researches the way people spend their free time, notes that historically, information scientists have neglected to design tools for people who search just for fun. Stebbins says people look for several sorts of things when searching the Web this way: sensory stimulation, interaction with others, and active entertainment…

Search engine research has traditionally focused elsewhere, says Daniel Tunkelang, an engineer at Google who is an expert on information retrieval. “It would be easy to dismiss [casual search behavior], except for the fact that people are doing it,” he says.

“To some extent, it’s up to systems to recognize and facilitate people who are putting themselves out there with different motivations, like to have fun,” [Wilson] says. “It may be feasible, as systems like Google do already with types of target content, to track ‘fun’ queries…”