I've spent most of the last month engaged in a knowledge quest to better anticipate the direction major players in search and social media are planning to take in the coming 12 months. The tour kicked off in Redmond, Wash. with Microsoft and concluded last week with a visit by Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to discuss the current and future state of Yahoo. It's probably no accident that the bookends of this process are two players in the space who are banking on greatness coming from the combined power they bring to the marketplace.

Last week, I talked about the work of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Herbert Simon and George Akerlof, key figures in helping define the foundations of consumer behavior, both rational and irrational, that dictate the realities of the marketplace. Today, I want to talk about how these emotional and cognitive biases and limitations play out online, but first, a quick recap is in order....