Chris Sherman made introduction speech I cant stress enough that he did a really *amazing* job of planning the session and laying out the issues. Major props.
Social Search goes back to the first days of the Internet.
W3.org – first directory.
Directories were the first forms of social media. Spammers destroyed the first directories with spam.
Future – people will be getting these things right
Talent pool is volunteer and free. The scaling is happening due to people participating.
Types – Shared bookmarks (del.icio.us), tag engines (blogs and RSS) and collaborative directories (Wikipedia).
Types of social search – Personalized verticals and collaborative harvesters.
Popurls.com – combines all news sites like dig, reddit, etc in one place.
Scale and scope will be major, tagging, ambiguity of language, human laziness, lack of controlled vocabulary, and of course…idiots!!!
Spammers – new systems create new opportunities.
Chris Sherman is optimistic about social search but is concerned about some issues. Trust networks, increased personalization, etc are great opportunities
Grant Ryan , Eurester speaks:
Flew in from New Zealand and is tired!
Anyone can create their own search engine with Eurester.
Power to the people – socialization of the search technology. Spidering, Directories, Link Analysis, Swickis
Search engines have done everything to avoid
We are a printing press not a publisher. We can decide how it looks and how to make money. We have created 20,000 search engines.
Monetize the printing press the way you want to – chose what is best for your community.
Swikinomics – How can you create vertical search engines. You can own your own Swicki. Property rights are key to motivate people in any economic system.
Anyone can create a valuable asset based on their knowledge
Existing communities and brands can extend into web search to create valuable services
Anyone can organize information on the Internet and get paid for it.
Tim Mayer, Yahoo!
Launching a search builder today – builder.yahoosearch.com
Search breakthroughs come from untapped authorities and rich new sources of metadata.
Yahoo’s mission – “Enrich peoples’ lives by enabling them to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge.”
Obtain a critical mass or high-quality user generated experience.
Nils Pohlmann, Lead Program Manager, Windows Live Search
Live spaces – new release
Ideas.live.com beta release Windows Live Q&A
Windows Live Local – Maps with tags
Windows Live QnA – sign up as qna.live.com
Questions:
Are the demographics different than in a bookmarking versus answers?
Tim – Del.icio.us is tech influencers. Tails of the tags are more mainstream. Myweb are early adopters. The demographic is younger overall.
Subscribers for a tag, Answers, is about contribute valuable knowledge.
There was a question about paying for bookmarking actions and the panel was in agreement that they are leery of going this route.
Regarding Yahoo! – Tim – Builder.search.yahoo.com – create customized web search. Create customized search experience. Reputation and trust are important!