Social Search is an Intelligent Combination of Link-Based Search and Organic Search

There was an article in the New York Times on Friday about a “social” search engine that taps into the social graph to get answers to questions, as opposed to simply pointing you to a website based on keywords. This might be a big part of the future.

The social search engine in question is called Aardvark, and it’s really interesting. You have to sign up, like on Facebook or LinkedIn, with a real name, DOB, and so forth – very brief, not too onerous. You can also use Facebook Connect to interface the search engine with your Facebook interests, contacts, groups, etc. You can also interface with an IM program you use (I used my Gchat account for this). Finally, you can click on either “Answer” or “Ask” to do either of those two behaviors.

First, I clicked on Answer. A few questions were there that I didn’t know how to answer, but one person (25 y/o from PA) asked about where she might get historical items checked out. I recommended the Smithsonian as a resource (oversimplifying a bit here for the sake of space). Next, I asked a question about learning to cook as a couple in DC. Within 5 min I had an IM and two emails with answers from different people. Very specific answers (XXX in YYY place has wonderful evening classes for couples), location-specific, reasonable, even with good grammar. The answers were actually very helpful to me. The normal route would have taken me to the website of a local magazine, where I would have then searched for stories about cooking, where I would have then… you get the point.

Currently we have search engines like Google and Bing which break your query down into keywords and give you “relevant” websites. Sometimes that works well (“Pamela Anderson Baywatch pics”), and sometimes it doesn’t (“Where’s a good place to take my vegetarian date on a Sunday night in Chicago?”). So-called “organic” search engines like Twitter and Digg allow the most popular items to bubble to the top, and to some degree that’s interfaced with location and contacts to give you more specifics.

With Aardvark, you seem to get the best of all of this for specific questions. I’m excited to see where this leads.
Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous