Wired just put out a story on social bookmarking which brings up a very interesting question. Whose results do we trust more? Those from an impersonal search engine or the selections of an human being? What makes another person’s picks interesting to us is obviously dependent on how much they have in common with us, but how do we determine that commonality?

How do we share meaning with that person if they’ve not shared our context?

I believe that is among the big questions still left to explore as new business models emerge in this space. As for the question posed in this headline, the reality is probably closer to how we seek and process information in general. We BOTH “search” and trust the “findings” of trusted sources. It’s really a question about the level of SATISFACTION with the known vs. the unknown, and it really depends on context. Thoughts?