Meredith Ringel Morris · Microsoft Research
What Do People Ask Their Social Networks, and Why? Exploring the Complementary Roles of Social Networks and Search Engines.

The Web has become an important information repository; often, it is the first source a person turns to with an information need. One common way to search the Web is with a search engine. However, it is not always easy for people to find what they are looking for with keyword search, and at times the desired information may not be readily available online. An alternative, facilitated by the rise of social media, is to pose a question to one's online social network. In this talk, I will discuss recent projects at Microsoft Research that have explored the differences in the types of questions that people choose to explore via asking their networks versus using search engines, and comparing the speed, quality, and quantity of answers discovered using these two methods. I will conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for next-generation information-seeking technologies that integrate the benefits of using both search engines and social networks.

Meredith Ringel Morris is a research scientist in the Adaptive Systems & Interaction group at Microsoft Research. She is also an affiliate assistant professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Dr. Morris's research area is human-computer interaction, with a particular emphasis on computer-supported cooperative work and social computing. She has published numerous technical articles and patents on multi-user interactive systems, and recently co-authored the book Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why? (Morgan & Claypool, 2010). Dr. Morris served as the co-chair of the technical program for CHI 2009, the ACM's premier conference on the topic of human-computer interaction. She was named one of 2008's 35 Innovators Under 35 by Technology Review, and one of 2009's 100 Notable Women in Seattle Technology by TechFlash. Dr. Morris earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University, and an Sc.B. in computer science from Brown University.