Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Round Table.
You're listening to Round Table with myself Hyang.
I'm joined by Fei -Fei and Steve Hatherly in the studio.
Coming up is Baidu or Google still the go -to for answers?
Gen Z says no thanks.
Instead they're turning to DoYin and Instagram for everything from lunch spots to life hacks.
Why has social media become the new search engine?
And our special segment Motivational Monday coming your way will give you that adrenaline shot for the start of the week.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Round Table China on Apple Podcast.
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Now let's turn our attention to a new generation of search engines or new ways in how we get information.
It's official. Search engines I mean are losing ground and social media and AI are taking their place.
Young people have abandoned the old -school ways of Googling and Baidu -ing in favor of platforms such as TikTok and Red where videos, reviews and algorithms deliver instant answers.
Now with generative AI chatbots that summarize answers from multiple sources, the search engine landscape is evolving faster than ever.
So is this a trend or is it the dawn of a new era of how we find information and the latest news seems to come from China and elsewhere as well that is young people no longer go to search engines and type in those words and click search.
Yes but I think it's like they are just switching to different platforms for different services.
For example if you're looking for they're looking for a good restaurant they'll use the review app which is Da Zhong Zhen Ping here in China or Yelp in other countries and then if they want to say search a destination for their trips traveling plans then they probably will go to platforms like Xiao
Hongxu or Red or other platforms as well or if they're looking for news or you know what's new with their lifestyles they probably will go to like short video platforms like TikTok or Dao Ying.
It's not that they're not using Google or Baidu all together it's just they're off on different reasons.
There was an article by a tech media website here and it talked about the fact that young people born in the 2000s say it's becoming increasingly difficult for people to find a reason to use search engines in life.
They haven't used a search engine like Baidu for a long time.
That's kind of like it would be Google in the west and then Baidu here in China would that be a fair assessment?
Just kind of like the go -to in the past?
Well apparently those times are changing now.
Yeah if they're looking for restaurants or things like that or fashion tips then they're looking for different spots where perhaps in the past you would just Google something you'd Google everything.
Every question you had you would go to a search engine.
Every question you had you go to Baidu before but now there are some various outlets and the game seems to be changing.
Okay I could be the dinosaur in the room when it comes to tech and search engine related issues just a quick question.
I used to think that people would go online to search for let's say what's the monthly active user number of chow about for example these kind of questions more like factual questions and then you go to search engines.
That's what Millennials and Gen Z so those born in the 1980s and 1990s and so on have are used to I suppose but now it seems like with the examples that you guys have given people are asking questions like how to plan dinners where to go for shopping tips and don't you find these are kind of like different
questions. One's more factual, one's more like give me suggestions and if it's give me suggestions I can't understand why people go to social media places because that's where you know people talk about wonderful places to have dinner or a lot of the times these are product placements but you know it's
a different type of search in a way.
Your work to be fair your line of work largely depicts your searches between the hours of 9 and 6 p .m.
I don't think the average searcher is looking for average monthly users of Taobao or something like that so people are looking for that type of information now and I think they can find faster and easier exactly the information they're looking for by using applications such as that.
There's a real trend coming Gartner made a stunning prediction forecasting the imminent and dramatic decline in search engine traffic.
By 2026 this is what they said that that's a research firm by the way Gartner.
They said that by 2026 traditional search engine volume will drop by 25 percent.
Search marketing losing shares to AI chatbots and other virtual agents as well.
It's just that there are more players I think in the game now whereas in the past you would have to go it's like looking in remember phone books I don't know if you ever had to find a phone number you used to have to get this 10 pound book this you know five kilogram book and then flip through the 3
,000 pages that are in there to try to find that little tiny one piece of information.
Well we don't do that anymore do we?
And now I feel like it's not exactly the same thing but it's kind of like these big search engines were the phone book of the Internet but now we can find those telephone numbers and the information we're looking for without going to the phone book if my analogy makes sense.
And that sort of reminds me of maybe the reason for young people are not going up on search engines for answers because a lot of times the results are just not useful at all for example I try to buy do a trip to Taeyeon to the city of Taeyeon for instance and the first things pop onto my screen are a lot
of advertisements about Taeyeon and then this Baidu biker or Wikipedia page about what is Taeyeon which I already know I know Taeyeon as a city I know where it is all I want to know is what are the good places to visit what are the good restaurants what are the good hotels if I want to visit Taeyeon but if I
went on platforms like Xiao Hongshu or Red they can just instantly post give me posts about you know places to go restaurants to eat hotels to book which is very convenient for me and I guess that's one of the reasons is that a lot of the young people they are sort of complaining that these search engines
are forcing them to sift through a lot of advertisements to get to the information or the hikes they want so but TikToks or other platforms I'm more convenient and that's the reason so who's doing this well according to a recent article by Netinfluencer research conducted by Forbes advisor and talker
research in April of this year they reveal a shift in online search behavior among Gen Z Gen Z born between 1995 and 2009 and they call it social searching and in that age group Gen Z a lot more are opting for social searching like TikTok like Instagram and they say that age matters according to the study
45 % of Gen Z are more likely to use social media for their searches compared to about 35 % of Millennials those are people born between 81 and 94 20 % of Gen X that's a group born between 1965 and 1980 and then 10 % of boomers the boomers from 1946 to 1964 they were born so you the numbers drop a little
bit you know the older generations are still using your traditional search engines but the younger people are they're not using them as much anymore and also could it be that with social media immediately you're bombarded with pictures photos and short videos and it doesn't really make us sound all
that smart we're not reading the words who's got time to read words words are the fine print is really off -putting for information and transformation in that sense yeah because well and I'm in I'm in that group I mean I'm in that group of people if I'm searching for a for a how -to kind of step -by -step
guide to something or if I'm searching for an explanation about something if I'm curious about something about Chinese history or Chinese culture I would much rather watch a video of someone explaining it to me then reading a five -page document that gives me the same information it's just entertainment
value I think you know I can learn what I want to learn but it's more passive as well I can sit back with headphones on and just watch your screen whereas opposed to click search click search click search okay is this the right thing I'm looking for k click search click search it's just an easier more
streamlined process plus the entertainment value so I totally get it oh but for me I don't really don't like the explanation videos online I just find is really long last like at least two two seconds two minutes sorry last for at least two minutes and I have to sit through the two minutes oh poor you
this is how spoiled we are this is no seriously this is how spoiled people have become these days short attention spans this is why social media has become a place for people to search as well that's what experts say it's a spot where you don't have to have a lot of attention span or a long attention span you
get your information quickly you get to the meat of what you want and then off you go on to the next thing you're looking for but Fei -Fei you bring up a really great point two minutes now seems too long right and I it sounds like I was attacking you before I wasn't because I'm the same way and everybody's
the same way these days yeah yeah and also I might be a little critical here but I suppose you know the biggest enemy for traditional search is not social media it is AI chatbots because with social media and traditional search engines you're still essentially you still need to go through one step that is you
click search you get go into this page that's lined up with all this information one with pictures videos that's social media and the other with more text but you still need to decipher which one needle out of this digital haystack has the most relevant information for me and on these social media platforms
there are plenty plenty of sponsored contents there are plenty of posts you don't know why appears first on your page you still need to go through that process of you selecting information but with AI chatbots it just you type in the prompt and immediately personalized information is synthesized and presented
to you and gosh I love to be spoon -fed most people might feel and that's another reason why these big search engines are dying and when you search for this type of news from the Western world Google is always the kind of the topic of the story and they say that there are new AI powered search engines
on the way to compete the tech world is buzzing with news about open AI set to challenge Google with their own search engine launch and that promises to integrate cutting -edge AI to enhance search results and the user experience two of the things who young you were just talking about Microsoft they're
making headlines they're going to be redefining the search engine landscape by leveraging their own AI technologies to outpace the competitors and there's more this is what I was talking about when I said before there are more players coming to the table to play the game and the tech is rising how people
want to receive their information that's changing this is like a big bowl of soup with a lot of different ingredients and it's all swirling and it's going to take a couple of years maybe more to see where it settles before we get to our next kind of phase because these giant search engines I mean Google
started back in 19 was it 1998 remember it entered pop culture and around 2002 it was mentioned in a drama when they they turned it into a verb right like did you google her and after that it just became the way it was and now we're redefining the way it will be and I guess then it reminds me of how
social media platforms are useful for things like fashion tips like I what sort of clothes I want to buy or would fit me the most but then at the same time if we're talking about news stories or piece of facts then a lot of the times if you when if you go on to platforms like doing a tick tock you will be
confused with a lot of fake news is that some of the videos are made from a sentence that's taken out of the context and may misleading you to believing in something else yeah that's interesting because Gen Z users prefer video format because they say it feels it gives them a more comprehensive search
results so they're seeing you know 360 view of a destination or an experience or a product you're right that's something that people really need to be aware of the authenticity of the information that they're receiving especially if you're getting news or some important information that you would like
to feel you'd be able to trust it then I have to say traditional media outlets sounds really good yeah and it's it still is that way you know I know I keep saying Google over and over but again in the West if you search this topic that's that's what they talk about and they do say that for lighter topics
then they're going to things like tick tock or Instagram or things like that but for heavier topics people are still using the bigger search engines for that hmm and the future of search may well be defined not by a single platform or tool but by any new comers or all these newcomers in the ecosystem
where traditional search engines social media and AI work in tandem offering us smarter faster and possibly more personalized ways to discover and interact with the world around us coming up next motivational Monday so what do you have for us fate a new fridge so I have a quote from a book called these
changes everything capitalism versus the climate because Monday double 11 is not only a shopping festival but is also the opening of a climate change conference in Azerbaijan and I find this sentence very awakening it says I agreed many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial we look for a split
second and then we look away or we look but then turn it into a joke which is another way of looking away or maybe we do look really look but then inevitably we seem to forget remember and then forget again climate changes like that it's hard to keep it in your head for very long and we get we engage
in this odd form of I again offer gain ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons we deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything hmm thank you very much yeah I think that's true right we hear about it in the news we hear a news story we talk about it
and then the next news story comes and we tend to forget about it so yeah yeah you're right having these types of events is important so that we stop forgetting about it yes indeed and Steve okay well then I will continue with what I have to share here I suppose for today's Motivational Monday let's
reflect on the remarkable journey of Quincy Jones one of the most powerful forces in popular music for more than half of a century he passed away on November the 3rd at age 91 Quincy wasn't just a prolific composer arranger and producer he was a visionary who redefined what was possible in the music
industry in America and beyond and he broke down barriers working tirelessly to merge genres and amplify voices especially within black popular art at a time when the industry was far more segregated it's kind of hard to fathom today like all that Quincy achieved from producing the highest -selling album
of all time Michael Jackson's thriller as well as pioneering in numerous movie scores and soundtracks such as the color purple to lifting the careers of countless artists and Quincy's life is proof of the unstoppable strength that comes from constantly pushing boundaries nominated for Grammy Awards
80 times with 28 wins he stood shoulder to shoulder with the Giants the greats embodying excellence across generations and he also showed us that true motivation strength isn't just about self -improvement it's about setting the stage for others elevating communities and building legacies that reach
far beyond oneself and on this motivational Monday let's take a page from Quincy's story the resilience the risk -taking the collaborations that made his life's work so extraordinary for anyone out there grinding on a big project or envisioning their future let this be a reminder that success often comes
to those who dare to be limitless he chased opportunities challenged norms and worked relentlessly to shape his dreams into realities and that same drive is something we can all bring into our lives no matter our field so today let's channel some of that spirit and I just feel that for Quincy story
that's fuel for every dreamer out there who's ready to soar and make some waves and on that note let's close today's segment with one of Quincy Jones greatest collaborations with Michael Jackson thriller this is still the best -selling album of all time with over 70 million copies sold worldwide additionally
thriller was the first album to reach 30 times platinum status in the US alone made this legendary track fuel our drive to push limits and pursue the extraordinary in all we do Michael Jackson's thriller do you enjoy the music and that brings us to the end of today's show thank you so much Steve Hatherley
and Fei Fei for joining the discussion I'm her young we'll see you next time
