Social Surfing

Social surfing has been a term used to describe an idea which grew out of the rise of Social network service applications such as Facebook and Twitter. The idea is described as, "creating a social hub." The idea has also been described as 'sorffing', "To browse internet content with the use of a multi-user social media application for the purpose of locating and discussing timely sources and information on various subjects."

Social Surfing Concepts

The social surfing concept has been compared to a Google search engine which is driven by individual opinions instead of computerized indexing services. Charles Daney notes, "The main tool now used is a search engine like Google. But that's an entirely automated computer process. A search process that intimately involved human judgment of hundreds or thousands of people to index information for specialized topics would be a great advance. This would appear to be what "social surfing" offers."

Blogger Michael notes, "Imagine for a moment that surfing the web is like a string. It spans a great distance into the horizon in front of you and behind. Now imagine that every time you visit a website a knot forms on the string. Sometimes these sites only hold your interest for a moment and other times you are enthralled for several minutes. The links that you share or browse for a long time appear as glowing knots. The brightness of glow is relative to the number of people who have also shared that same link or spent time there. This notion is a slight variation of Google’s page weighting system."

The Importance of Social Surfing in Business

Social surfing is an important tool in the business world with regard to marketing a company's brand. The internet is a social phenomenon and businesses are interested in the comments which people make in regard to their brands. This is why it is important "that your brand establish a social media presence."