paulguy - 8:15 pm on May 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

I'm actually glad about this, and have been waiting for the day when it would happen.
I've always hated generic info from content farms that keeps popping up at the top of my searches. I notice that my friends have never "liked" generic content generated mostly for SEO. They tend to share real, useful content that is developed by professionals. I'm talking news from major news orgs, videos that come from networks and individuals with a lot of talent.
I think people's friends lists are far less gameable than SEO algos. I'm pretty selective about who I "friend." Essentially, they're all people I know. Sure, people who are less selective will have more diluted, possibly worse results, but overall I think the votes created by social, especially Facebook shares, are the closest we'll ever get to a real human-powered search engine.
Really, I'd say it's been a while since I've found anything new and interesting through search. Most of my discoveries on the web come from established sources that I check every day (like this site), or from what my friends share on social networks.
Bing and Google are moving in the direction of providing much more relevant search results. As a webmaster, I think good quality content, the kind where people are looking for "Like" and "Tweet" buttons because they can't wait to tell their friends about it, is the future.