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October 20, 2009

Aardvark Launches Website: Social Search Meets Answers Site Mashup

Aardvark has launched its new social search site at vark.com. Though previously it was available through IM, Twitter, and email, having a presence as a bona fide website seems to be a boost.

Aardvark's version of social search is more like an answers site than other social search sites. To test it out, I first asked a question about last night's Monday Night Football game because I didn't catch the final score.

Yes, it is easy to just go to ESPN.com and look it up. But the advantage of Aardvark is similar to SMS search - go on about your day while someone else does the searching. Of course, a question about Monday Night Football wouldn't even require searching. I knew some dudes out there watched the game.

It feels a lot like throwing a question out to your Twitter or Facebook networks, but those contacts don't always want to answer questions. At Aardvark, the whole point is answering questions.

Here's how it works.

Type in your question and wait for a response. People in the Aardvark community will answer it. You'll get an email when they do. You can also answer other people's questions.

The only thing I didn't like was Aardvark's extensive sign-up process. They have Facebook connect, which is normally a quick way to use a membership site. But then they made me sign up for an Aardvark account as well. If I wasn't a search blogger, I can't say that I would have signed up for yet another site. As a search blogger, using the site was pretty fun, so I recommend signing up anyway.

One thing that would be nice to see Aardvark incorporate is real-time updates and a more seamless way of accessing questions. Perhaps links to a user's most recent questions on the right hand sidebar for easy access and then sidebar updating as the user asks questions and answers come in. Instead, the page must be manually refreshed - and only links to a separate page with your Q&As appears.

These are relatively minor pet peeves at launch. There are obviously some smart dudes behind Aardvark so keep an eye on how this site evolves.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 12, 2009

StumbleUpon Enhances Search in Latest Update

StumbleUpon updated its social bookmarking service last week and one of the key improvements was search. Users can now search within their favorites, friend's favorites or the entire site. The search was enhanced using community ratings and reviews.

Additional updates include UI and social features. The UI is simpler and more minimalistic. It's cleaner and just looks easier to use. On the social side of things, StumbleUpon says it's now easier to find your friends. They're also following the trend of Twitter and Facebook by enabling near real-time updates.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 11, 2009

It's So On: Facebook Rolls Out Live Feed Search to All Users, Includes Real-Time Updates

Just hours after announcing its acquisition of FriendFeed, Facebook came out with more big news: it's rolling out its new search to all users.

Now, you'll be able to search the live feeds of your friends and everyone. Of course, everyone only includes those who allow their updates to be visible to the public.

Also, since the search is rolling out, some users will have access to it sooner than others. Expect this to resolve within a few days.

Like the newly acquired FriendFeed and Twitter-the-competitor, one of the best features about this is real-time updates of search results. If you're viewing the results and a new update is relevant to your search, Facebook will let you know. (This already happens when you're viewing your live feed and your friends update their statuses.)

Two things I don't like: (1) the UI and (2) the fact that when you conduct a new search, you have to select "friends" or "everyone" again to search the live feed - even if you were already looking at live feed results.

Check out this search for Flavia Pennetta, an Italian tennis player who won the LA Women's Championship this past Sunday:

This is truly significant because now people can start using hashtags with Facebook just like they do on Twitter. I think search has been one of the driving forces behind Twitter, but Facebook has a much larger user base. Plus, Facebook didn't completely go down during the DoS attacks last week.

Some are even saying that the new search war is Google v. Facebook. Josh Catone over at Mashable is pointing out what Google has to lose, despite its massive strength.

What do you think of the new Facebook search? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

P.S. Connect with me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/nathaniajohnson

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 10, 2009

Facebook's FriendFeed Acquisition Could Have Implications for Search (Yes, Search)

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, a social media aggregator. As Facebook has looked recently to improve and expand features like its live feed and search, this acquisition makes a lot of sense.

FriendFeed makes it easy to share social media updates such as Tweets, blogs, and yes, Facebook updates all in one place. Facebook also enables updates, but through applications and APIs. In other words, it's just a heckuva lot easier on FriendFeed.

The implications for search could be big. Facebook has been testing search for its live feed. This is most obviously an attempt to compete with Twitter, but the FriendFeed acquisition could be a game-changer.

FriendFeed has already incorporated real-time search site-wide. Bringing that functionality to all of Facebook, with its 250 million users and tons of fan pages and marketing conducted by brands could mean people finding what they're searching for on the site where they hang out socially. Recent data has shown search on social media sites to be on the rise.

Oh yeah, did I mention FriendFeed was founded by a couple of ex-Googlers?

FriendFeed has always had the potential to change the face of search, but the site wasn't picking up in popularity like Twitter and Facebook. For Facebook, this could speed up the implementation of real-time search, which they really need to do. The acquisition looks like a win-win for both parties.

If you're not already marketing on Facebook, this acquisition is a pretty big sign to begin doing so - and sooner rather than later.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 4, 2009

Delicious Updates with New Search, Email and Tweet Features

Social bookmarking site Delicious, which is owned by Yahoo!, has been updated with some snazzy new features to make your bookmarking experience easier.

New search tools have been added that allow you to search a given date range and/or filter down by tag. Search results will also display rich media content for sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Yelp.

Next up, a new category has been added to the homepage called "Fresh Bookmarks." This shows recent bookmarks that are also trending on Twitter. Notice how the number of Tweets is listed below a bookmark:

If you want the old Delicious, just click on "Popular Bookmarks."

Last but not least, if you want to share a bookmark off Delicious, you now have the ability to email or Tweet the link directly from Delicious.

What do you think of these Delicious updates? Share your thoughts below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 29, 2009

Search Stars in Redesign of Twitter Homepage

Twitter has unveiled the redesign of their homepage and it's clear they're dedicated to search. (You'll have to sign out to view it.) They now serve up a central search box as the main feature with trending topics below in almost a tag cloud style. The top row, with the biggest font features current hot topics. The second row with slightly smaller font features hot topics from the past day and finally the third row with topics from the past week.

I think it would be nice to incorporate the design more inside the sign-up wall. It looks sharp and the main reason I go to the Twitter site is to see what's trending or to conduct a search. I use a desktop and mobile client to do my actual Tweeting.

Twitter does have plans to keep working on the entire site, so they remain a site to watch as they continue to incorporate their strategy.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 16, 2009

Scour Incorporates Real-Time Results into Regular Results

Real-time search is all the rage lately, with Twitter fueling the movement via its search of user feeds. Of course, this all really started with universal search and the addition of news results to timely keywords.

Social search engine Scour is getting into the real-time search game with a rather nice approach. Instead of revamping their site or having a separate little section for news-y results, they're simply notifying users of a real-time result with an icon containing an exclamation mark. Otherwise, the results just hang out with the "regular" results.

Check out this search for Tiger Woods. You get the Wikipedia page, his official site, and his PGA tour profile. Then you see the first "real-time" result, a press release on the PGA site for July 14, 2009.

A few links down you see a result for one of many articles talking about how Woods is favored to win this week's British Open.

Despite the pleasantness of the integration, it would be nice to see Twitter results. Perhaps a widget on the sidebar or something.

What do you think of Scour's real-time results? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

July 15, 2009

Hunch Adds Shortcuts to Help Users Navigate Topics

Hunch, the decision engine that launched just after that *other* decision engine, has already added an update to their site. They've added "shortcut topics," which aid in navigation.

If you haven't visited Hunch yet, then you need to know that the site serves up a decision by asking you a bunch of questions. Say, for example, you're trying to decide what type of coffee you want to buy. You type in "coffee" to the search box. A list of suggested questions and topics comes up:

As you can tell, if you already know you want to buy organic, you can select the question with ">Organic" in order to skip ahead to that narrowed-down category.

Then you can embark on a series of questions to help Hunch find the right answer for you. Here's the first question:

Conducting a number of searches, I came across few shortcuts. However, there may obviously be more in subject areas I personally am not interested in. The other factor is that Hunch is based on community contributions. So, substantive topics depend upon the users submitting content.

What do you think about Hunch's shortcuts? Tell us your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 14, 2009

BingTweets Mashes Up Trending Tweets with Search Results (UPDATE)

UPDATE: BingTweets was showing old trending topics earlier, but as has been noted in the comments, that has been fixed and now is current.

Ever noticed a trending topic on Twitter and then headed to a search engine to learn more? A new site from the Bing team makes that process even easier.

BingTweets is a new site that pulls in trending topics on Twitter and offers Bing search results right on the same page. BingTweets is not found at Bing.com but rather has its own standalone site at BingTweets.com.

When you click on one of the topics, search results are automatically and immediately triggered with no extra clicks.

However, there's one issue and it's a biggie: The topics seem to be delayed. Under the popular right now tab, Wimbledon was trending despite the finals being almost 10 days ago. Wimbledon is no longer trending on Twitter.

BingTweets trending topics July 14, 2009

Twitter trending topics July 14, 2009

Overall, though the UI is nice.

Another thing I would adjust is the Twitter stream down the left side. When I selected "Andy Murray," the Tweet stream brought up Tweets that had the word murray but not andy. If I'm interested in Tweets about Andy Murray, then Tweets about Bill Murray are largely irrelevant.

What do you think about BingTweets? Give us your first impressions in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

July 3, 2009

FriendFeed Launches Real-Time Search; Includes Facebook and Twitter Submissions

Buzz has been building about real-time search. Of course, you can search real-time Tweets on Twitter, Facebook is testing search on its live Feed, and Bing just added limited Twitter search to its engine.

Now, FriendFeed is launching real-time search and it has the potential to be the mackdaddy of them all.

Here's why. FriendFeed is a social aggregator. It's a one-stop shop to check and update a bunch of different networks, blogs, etc. Now, you can search all of that in real-time.

The drawback? It only searches what people submit to FriendFeed. Whoever does that can basically say "Check" in the chess match of social real-time search.

Still, this is a tremendous step in that direction. Even better, FriendFeed has released an embeddable real-time search widget you can put on your website.

What do you think of FriendFeed real-time search? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 2, 2009

Bing Integrates Twitter, Sometimes and If You're Important Enough

If you're a celebrity or some other figure Bing has deemed "prominent," then searches for your name plus the word Twitter will turn up a few of your Tweets above the organic results. You can also search for a person's screen name, preceded by the @ sign.

Prominence is deemed by number of followers and volume of tweets. Bing uses the Twitter API to pull in the Tweets. But the feature is inconsistent.

Of course, I assumed Ashton Kutcher, the King of Twitter, would be included since he has 2.5 million followers. But the first search for his name didn't include Tweets. The second one didn't either. The third one did.

And here's what it looks like when it happens:

What do you think of Bing integrating Twitter into the results? Share your reaction in the comments section below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 23, 2009

Semanti Firefox Add-on Aims to Reduce Keyword Refinement, Provide Better Results

If you're like most searchers, you find yourself refining your searches until you find what you're looking for. But if Bruce Johnson from Semanti has his way, you'll start getting the results you want from your first search.

Johnson is the CEO of Semanti, a San Francisco-based semantic search company. Today, Semanti is officially launching their brand new Firefox add-on. The add-on uses an 8 million term ontology to aid searchers with their keywords and phrases.

Semanti can figure out that when you type in fuel economy, that other terms such as mpg are relevant to your search as well. No need to go back to your original search to add on that second term in the hopes of finding new results.

When installed, you can use Facebook Connect to sign in. Then, Semanti will provide query suggestions for Google, Yahoo, and Bing. When the results page comes up, you'll see the Semanti results above the search engine's organic results. You can collapse the results if you wish.

Semanti ultimately relies on social search, hence the Facebook Connect. Johnson says that the sites that your social network visits are more likely to be relevant to you than the ones generated by a generic algorithm. Additionally, Johnson believes the "wisdom of the crowds" can fuel better search.

In order for that to happen, your network will need to actively be using and bookmarking Semanti. Of course, that's the big challenge in search - getting people to form new habits with new search engines. Johnson says that's why Semanti was developed as an add-on. You don't have to use a new search engine. You just use your default engine and then use the Semanti to bookmark.

Because of the social aspect, it takes a while for Semanti to work. Johnson and team may need to rework this since most people want their search to work out of the box. But to get an idea of what Semanti is like in all its glory, check out this video:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

June 18, 2009

Searching Twitter: TweetScan Offers History, CrowdEye Launches

Searching Twitter is becoming increasingly popular (you can tell by the amount of spam seen in the trending topics). So, it comes as no surprise that applications are being built and expanded to leverage Twitter search.

TweetScan was one of the first applications to incorporate Twitter search and now they've expanded to include historical Tweets. You can now search a database of 220,660,667 messages from Twitter back to November 2007 (as well as 1,627,559 from microblogging network identi.ca). It's not free, though. It will cost you $20 a year. Hey, they gotta pay for the database somehow, right?

Next up is a new kid on the scene. Launching this week is CrowdEye. Their modus operandi is to examine how popular topics have developed over time. The results include a visual graph showing the number of Tweets over time, popular links on a given topic, and, of course, actual Tweets. Check out this result for "iphone" -

What do you think of these Twitter search apps? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 20, 2009

Zombie Tweets Found in Search, Twitter App

Remember that Tweet you thought you deleted? It never really died. It lives on in the Twitter search - and at a Twitter app called Tweleted.

Jonathan Ross found this out the hard way when he posted his email address on Twitter. Ross has a quarter million followers and decided that perhaps posting the email address wasn't a good idea after all. But it was too late.

Apparently, it's always too late. The good news is that if you accidentally delete a tweet, Tweleted will help you find it.

I decided to test this out for myself. Sure, enough, I deleted my test tweet, searched for it and found it using both Twitter search and Tweleted:

Do you think Twitter should permanently erase deleted Tweets? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

May 4, 2009

Scour Attempts to Attract Searchers with $1,000 Giveaway

Social search site Scour is holding a contest where the prize is a $1,000 giveaway each month for the next three months. For every search a person conducts on Scour, they will be entered into the contest, up to 50 entries per day.

Members of Scour will also receive 1 entry per 4 searches conducted by friends who sign up to Scour via referral.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft's recent incentive efforts to attract searchers to Live Search via programs like Cashback and SearchPerks.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every Twitterer Gets Search on Their Home Page

About a month ago, Twitter began testing search features on the home pages of its users. Now, they're rolling out the updated interfaces to all users.

You may recall that the changes include putting a search box on the right-hand sidebar as well as offering the opportunity to save searches. Additionally, terms that are trending on Twitter are listed underneath the search box.

What do you think of the update? Let us know in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

Digg Search is Now Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Digg has introduced an updated search to their social bookmarking site. Design head Daniel Burka outlined the changes in a post on the Digg blog. The updates include:

Filtering by factors such as Digg count, topic, time, etc.
Advanced shortcuts to search for specific promotion characteristics. Add +p to your query for only promoted stories, +u for upcoming stories, and +b for buried.
Common search tricks - quotes for exact match and a negative sign before the term to keep that term out of results
A graph demonstrating the historical trend of a term
Searching for stories from a particular domain is much more effective. Filtering results by domain is also available.
New RSS feeds allow users to create feeds for a given topic but filter out results they don't wish to see
Digg search is faster

What do you think of the Digg search updates? Let us know in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

April 8, 2009

Hit Film Twilight Tops Twitter Searches

Hitwise has released data revealing the top searches conducted on Twitter for the week ending March 21, 2009. At the top of the list is the film sensation Twilight, based on a book series of the same name. Never heard of it? Ask your local teenager.

Meanwhile, here are the top 25 searches, per Hitwise:

Hitwise also reports that entertainment searches were the top category of searches in the top 75 search terms. They consisted of 29% of those searches.

Here are the top 10 celeb searches:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 2, 2009

Twitter Tests Search-Centric Interface (We've Got Screenshots!)

Twitter is testing an interface that incorporates new search features. The interface is an attempt to keep it simple by using the original Twitter design. The test has been rolled out to a subset of people. I was pleasantly surprised to sign in and see my profile was getting the test page. Now I get to show you what's up!

First up, the search box is included on the sidebar. Previously, Twitter was testing a search box in the top right navbar. You'll also notice trends underneath the search box.

Next, the search results appear right there on the homepage, where you would normally see the Tweets from your Tweeps.

You can also save your search if you wish to return to it at a later date. When you do, it lists the search under the search box:

What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 5, 2009

Twitter's Big Search Plans: A Google Killer?

AdAge has the scoop on Twitter's plans for search. Could this possibly be a real challenge to Google?

Last year, Twitter acquired Summize, which was a Twitter search developed on the API. Twitter search is increasingly popular, especially for finding real-time chatter on a given topic. Recently, a Greasemonkey script was created to incorporate Twitter search into Google results (for those who install the add-on in Firefox).

But Twitter has bigger plans. They want to add a Q&A feature that harnesses the collective - and immediate - knowledge of the Twitterverse. Think Yahoo! Answers meets Twitter Search. Answers sites have been growing in popularity at a rapid pace. This could be a very smart move for Twitter.

Anecdotally, I've been seeing people using Twitter before checking with Google. It makes sense. Ask people from your trusted network instead of searching through tens or hundreds of results on your own - and then deciphering how trustworthy the information is.

If Twitter focuses on search, it's easy to see how they could then monetize their network (finally): search ads.

It's no wonder that Google has its eye on Twitter. From the CEO calling it a "poor man's email" (postering??) to rumors that it may seek to acquire Twitter, this is an exciting space to watch.

Oh, and Twitter passes my branding test. Twitter is definitely being used as a verb!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

March 3, 2009

Firefox Greasemonkey Script Returns Realtime Tweets in Google Searches

Mark at MT-Hacks is quite the genius. He's created a Greasemonkey script that will return real-time Tweets in your Google searches, if you're using the Firefox browser.

If things like "Greasemonkey script" throw you off, don't worry, it's very easy. Just three steps:

1. Install Greasemonkey plugin (click here). 2. Install "Twitter Search results on Google" script (click here). 3. Search.

I searched "coffee" and the script returned the 5 most recent Tweets atop the Google results:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 4, 2008

Alessio Signorini Tapped as Director of Search Technology at OneRiot

Social search engine OneRiot has a new Director of Search Technology and it's Alessio Signorini, former Director of Technology at Ask.com. While at Ask.com, Signorini oversaw natural language processing, ranking optimizations, and query classifications.

"It's testament to the work we're doing that someone as talented as Alessio has joined our team," said Kimbal Musk, OneRiot CEO. "His experience and expertise will help us continuously improve our efforts to enable users to find the pulse of the web."

"OneRiot is unique in its ability to help users find the pulse of the web -- to find the news, videos and products that people are talking about right now," said Alessio. "OneRiot is a very attractive search company. I can't wait to get started!" Related Reading: Expedia Chooses Baynote Social Search to Improve Site Usability Social Search Site Scour Now Speedier (Say That 10 Times Fast) Google Xooglers Launch Social Search Engine Mechanical Zoo Social Search: Welcome to the World of Socialommerce Mahalo Adds New Social Search Tools

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 20, 2008

Social Search Site Scour Now Speedier (Say That 10 Times Fast)

Social search engine Scour is now faster. Not only that, there's a whole host of new things that have been added.

Such as:

Search speed improved by 80%—For example, a search for “shoes” is averaging .123 seconds with the newly overhauled speed.
New layout—Limited the top sponsored results and added more listings per page to help users find what they're searching for quicker and without clutter.
New search filter—Double click on any word in the results to add or remove the word to your search.
Open results in new tab—More tabs available for easy navigation.
Site search from results—Now users can conduct a site search using their current query on any site in the results page.
Better comment view—Users can better organize comments left by other Scour members
Enhanced points box—Users can get a detailed snapshot of their total points breakdown with a simple click without leaving the page they are on.

What do you think about the updates? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 28, 2008

Liana Evans of KeyRelevance on social media optimization (SMO)

One of the people that you will want to hear speak at SES San Jose is Liana Evans of KeyRelevance. Li is the director of Internet marketing at KeyRelevance and a member of the “Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO)” panel on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, at 1 p.m.

I'm bummed out because I'll be speaking at the “News Search SEO” session at the same time, so I won't be able to hear what she has to say in San Jose.

So, through the magic of YouTube video, I've interviewed Li – so I won't miss her keen insights entirely – although there is no substitute to hearing her first hand.

Li is a search marketing guru (literally), especially on topics like social media optimization (SMO). So, here's a sneak preview of what she has to say.

Why Your Social Media Campaigns Should Socialize More Liana is also famous for her Flickr photos from sessions, panels, exhibits, the night life, and everything in between at Search Engine Strategies conferences and she won one of the Flickr photo sharing awards for SES London 2008.

Li specializes in social media marketing, blog optimization, link building and viral marketing. I like to hang out with her at SES conferences because Li has a background in both public relations and information technology.

Li is the creator and main contributor to Search Marketing Gurus and has assembled a well rounded group of professional search marketing professionals to contribute to the blog. Oh, and she's shared her secret for finding the best cheesesteak in Philly with me – not that this has influenced my favorable opinion of her at all.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 22, 2008

Expedia Chooses Baynote Social Search to Improve Site Usability

Travel search site Expedia has announced the selection of Baynote to add Social Search to complement its search results. Baynote uses what other searchers find most helpful or most interesting to refine search results.

“Baynote's Social Search technology is a great fit for Expedia because the collective input from our millions of monthly visitors constantly improves the relevance of the search results,” said Tom Taylor, director of strategy for Expedia.

Expedia says users will now be able to search for specific types of trips or hospitality vendors instead of simply browsing the site. The goal is to provide a better experience for the user. Adds Taylor, “The Baynote solution is able to deliver the most relevant results based on what other Expedia customers have previously found most useful for similar queries.”

Earlier today, SEW expert Mark Jackson posted about the connection between Usability and SEO. Looks like social site search could be another way to incorporate usability while aiding your SEO campaign.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 10, 2008

SEW Experts: Has Facebook Found the Key to Making Money via Search?

While it's anyone's guess what will be rolled out at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference on July 23, the buzz is predicting an announcement of e-commerce and micro-payment capabilities. And once there's scale to the commercial transactions taking place on Facebook, then people will start searching for things rather than just people. In today's building brand equity column, "Has Facebook Found the Key to Making Money via Search?," Erik Qualman notes that there's money to be made there, and small businesses need to start paying attention.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 12, 2008

Will FriendFeed Change the Face of Search?

Earlier this year, I wrote about FriendFeed's new search feature and how it was a powerful tool for finding conversations about your brand. I've used the site a little more, and I know it's a great way to find user-generated content as well. Now, Steve Rubel is weighing in on the discussion over the power of FriendFeed's search, saying it could disrupt traditional search methods.

Rubel suggests that the real power lies in searching among a network of trusted friends. He says there will be a whole advertising strategy built around it, which he dubs social contextual search advertising. Rubel thinks this is where Facebook and Google are headed as well.

Really, all FriendFeed needs to do is sell contextual ads for this to happen. But FriendFeed is a long way off from disrupting search or changing search ad models. And is that the true mission of the social aggregator?

One of the best things about FriendFeed and all social sites is discovery of new things. It's difficult to search for things you're not aware of, making discovery more powerful than search, in my opinion.

Even so, FriendFeed needs to figure out ways to help its users manage all the noise. When you're tracking a bunch of people who are all sending their blogs, social bookmarking votes, Tweets, etc. to FriendFeed, it gets a bit overwhelming. The new "rooms" that have been created are helpful and so is the hide feature, but tagging friends would be even better.

Plus, FriendFeed needs to watch the mobile space carefully. The attention economy will be streamlined even further and all the noise will be a distraction.

Finally, sites like FriendFeed and Twitter are all primarily used by internet marketers, bloggers, web developers, and other tech power users. Search appeals to the masses for obvious reasons, but social media sites have yet to prove staying power (Friendster, anyone?).

What do you think the future of search and social media are? Will social media overtake search or is Google here to stay? Let it fly in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 9, 2008

New 3G iPhone 2.0 Gets Loopt

Social Search may be the killer app for the new 3G iPhone 2.0 release.

Loopt launched its native iPhone social search app onstage at WWDC, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. The free application will connect users with their friends by using location technology built in to the iPhone, Like Google Maps, Loopt will drop pins onto a map showing users where their friends are.

CNET reports that Loopt also offers other social-networking features, such as calling, texting, and sending invitations to meet up. The example used was seeing if any friends are in your area for lunch. Once you have located friends, you can send them an invitation for lunch, and if they agree, you will be one touch away from directions to their location. As Sam Altman from Loopt put it, "You will never have to eat alone, or at a bad restaurant again."

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 2, 2008

Add Value to Twitter Tweets

There's some value to Twitter “tweets” after all. If you carefully assemble sources, then more useful and search-friendly content is bound to emerge.

Newstex has already started to bundle tweets this way. It's a natural progression for the company, which distributes real-time news feeds, commentary and blogs to corporate and financial users.

During the past few years, Newstex identified and signed up 4,000+ blogs and redistributed them to publishers such as Lexis-Nexis. With the twittering explosion, Newstex President Larry Schwartz wanted to deliver the added information coming from live tweets too.

I had a chance to catch up with Schwartz, to see if there's demand for their Newstwits. Among the bloggers they represent, the response has been very positive: “We first approached our existing blog network and asked if they would be interested in participating, and several hundred immediately signed up to part of the feed."

"Since the announcement, we have strong interest and several of our existing blog clients are adding the Newstwits product. We quickly learned syndicating individual ‘tweets' was less valuable to our clients than packing 30 minutes of ‘tweets' into one news story/blog post.”

All these bundled tweets can be made searchable by their clients, who are all online publishers. Newstex delivers them every half-hour, and publishers integrate them like any other real-time feed. When the bundles appear on web pages, there's more silo-content available for site search or web search.

There's a lesson or two here, as Twitter continues to grow. With some elbow grease, good content can be mined from tweets from the right or relevant sources. Perhaps bundling will become another way to build content that attracts traffic. It's interesting to consider how these mini-posts can be added to publisher arsenals.

Today Schwartz remains realistic about acceptance rates, among his corporate and financial users. “When we mention Twitter, they look at us like we contracted some strange disease -- and one Wall Street person asked if Twitter was a speech problem. We have a long way to go, but it only took us three years for blogs to go mainstream. Hopefully, Twitter will be quicker.”

Posted by at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

Google Xooglers Launch Social Search Engine Mechanical Zoo

Everyone knows that the Google search engine no longer wants to be a social donut.

But the first true social search engine may have already escaped the innovation machine at the Googleplex.

CNET reporter Stefanie Olsen scooped the industry on the launch of Mechanical Zoo, a stealth search engine currently in alpha with several hundred users.

Led by Nathan Stoll, former product lead of Google News, Mechanical Zoo may launch in beta as early as May, 2008. Search Engine Watch readers may remember Stoll's Google News presentation at SES San Jose in 2005.

San Francisco-based Mech Zoo was co-founded by Max Ventilla, a former Google business development manager; and computer scientist Damon Horowitz, former lead engineer of Perspecta, a search software firm. Former Google Firefox app-security engineer Fritz Schneider, is on staff.

Ex-Yahoos joined the team, too: Winton Davies, (Yahoo Research Labs), and Bob Zoller (Yahoo 360).

Sep Kamvar, founder of search technology company Kaltix (sold to Google) is an adviser.

Mechanical Zoo is building products that enable "social search" by accessing the knowledge of people in your network. It's not too far from the old Bebo space.

Their plan is to develop several experimental offshoots built around their core technology.

The 12-man team is looking for a few good people. So what skills would you need? AJAXy web development; rapid prototyping and development with rails; new paradigms of data availability and access (OpenSocial); distributed systems and large datasets; statistics; algorithms; NLP and machine learning; recommendation systems; usability research; online community building; and data-driven marketing.

Sounds like there's more than a one-trick pony search engine at the Mechanical Zoo.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:03 PM | Permalink

April 10, 2008

Digging deeper into the social press release

First of all, a tip of the cap to Drew Kerr over at Four Corners Communications for emailing me about a new post by Mark Glaser on the MediaShift weblog at PBS, which is entitled, "The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public."

Mark interviews Laura Sturaitis, senior vice president of media services & product strategy for Business Wire, Andy Beal, a marketing consultant who writes the Marketing Pilgrim blog, and others about the evolution of press releases.

Mark also includes links to a number of articles on the topic, including: Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae? and The 100th Birthday of the Press Release at Search Engine Watch at Search Engine Watch.

Mark's post is a fair portrait of the social press release -- warts and all.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:28 PM | Permalink

March 20, 2008

SEW Experts: Social Search: Welcome to the World of Socialommerce™

Social media combined with search holds great potential for e-commerce. In today's Building Brand Equity column, "Social Search: Welcome to the World of Socialommerce," Erik Qualman explains that companies and marketers would be better off spending more time listening to their customers and potential customers, and less time spending hours upon hours figuring out their next award-winning – but "no-customer-getting" – 30-second spot.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:01 AM | Permalink

March 19, 2008

Mahalo Adds New Social Search Tools

Today at Search Engine Strategies New York, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis unveiled the latest set of features at the social search engine: My Mahalo.

My Mahalo is a service, currently in beta, that allows users to import their ratings and reviews from other social media sites, and share them with contacts on Mahalo Social. That service, which launched December, is similar to Yahoo's delicious service. It lets users recommend and share links, or see recommendations from friends and top Mahalo users.

With My Mahalo, the social features are becoming more prominent. Mahalo pages will now show pictures of friends that have expressed an interest in that topic on Mahalo, or have imported their reviews from other social media sites, such as Facebook, MySpace or niche sites like GoodReads.com.

"We're taking the information that's available on the social graph, and putting it where you need it," Calacanis told SEW.

Instead of having to visit several social media sites to find the various comments, ratings, reviews and other content your friends have created, Mahalo users can see all of that info in one place, if their friends have imported their data into Mahalo. So a search for the movie Bladerunner will show you how many of your friends have seen the movie, how many want to see it, how many reviewed it, etc.

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