Yahoo introduces social search by Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch (Jun 29)
Goes some way to explain social search and Yahoo's new play in that field with MyWeb 2.0. Mainly it's tapping into social networks to get recommendations.
"For example, if someone is looking for a new computer, or plasma TV, or sporting gear, they'd typically ask a friend for a recommendation. But by aggregating those recommendations into a database, a person could search for recommendations without even speaking to a friend."
Others include Friendster (which coincidentally uses the Yahoo Search), Insider Pages (yellow pages written by friends).
Quotes David Ku, a scientist at Yahoo's search unit, as blogging, "Over time, we envision communities using My Web to build their own search engines to capture and make accessible the knowledge of their community - search engines populated with the collective experience of a group of medical researchers, a community of PHP experts, a bird watching club, or members of a structural engineering consulting firm."
For full blog entry see Search, with a little help from your friends Yahoo Search Blog (Jun 28)
I'm not so sure. Friendster didn't take off, why should Yahoo? People belong to many social networks for different purposes and interests. How are these reconciled? And what to do when you don't want your search results influenced by others?
Posted by Gwen at June 30, 2005 10:18 AM