> Google has access to the same information about other social profiles that it does about its own profiles, as the tool on the site demonstrates.
Does it demonstrate that? It's more likely that those profiles just show up because of the normal page rank algorithm (eg Jamie Oliver's twitter account ranks highly because so many people link to it). It is a reasonable proxy for popularity for popular people, at least, though there's probably too much noise before you get too far down the long tail. But it isn't the same thing that the OP was talking about.
I actually think it would be cool if google took the more Open Social approach by taking the sites I list in my profile as mine, looked at my friends and frequency of posting where available (more twitter than facebook), and then biased my results to favor my preferred networks. I don't know if it would end up with great results, but it could be an interesting separate tool, perhaps.
Does it demonstrate that? It's more likely that those profiles just show up because of the normal page rank algorithm (eg Jamie Oliver's twitter account ranks highly because so many people link to it). It is a reasonable proxy for popularity for popular people, at least, though there's probably too much noise before you get too far down the long tail. But it isn't the same thing that the OP was talking about.
I actually think it would be cool if google took the more Open Social approach by taking the sites I list in my profile as mine, looked at my friends and frequency of posting where available (more twitter than facebook), and then biased my results to favor my preferred networks. I don't know if it would end up with great results, but it could be an interesting separate tool, perhaps.