I'd get excited about image search technology if it could identify components of pictures (e.g. a red house, an angry cat, etc). This means that when I search for "happy family at beach" the search would actually look at the db of pics to find a) a family b) a beach and c) indications of happiness. That'd drastically cut my image search time down.
Text tags on images have a limit to the accuracy of the results.
I'd say that you're right, mate. Stuff outside of your circle of friends (i.e. this site) does enrich lives. So why make tiiny?
Maybe 'connectedness to their friends' isn't a good metric for tiiny, as maybe that's not their goal. But I would say it's a good metric to keep in mind for people in general, and one that I think is being overlooked as people consume more and more 'social' content that doesn't really make them feel very social at all.
This seems to be a step in the wrong direction. The user's connectedness to their friends is now becoming even more superficial.
People already spend too much time consuming social content that doesn't enrich their lives, and this type of content is even more detached than anything on fb, twitter, or snapchat.