Re: Search

There’s this lovely Greasemonkey script that does the job of getting the best of both worlds- Google and Twitter, for me, but then it would be quite interesting to have Google bring out a microblogging search engine. (conjecture, but very much in the realm of possibility) In fact, with the recent pain I’ve been having with Twitter Search, it would actually be a big help. What this would do to Twitter Search and would Google add sense (in terms of ‘authority’/ relevance etc and indexing shared links) and Ad Sense to it, and would they share revenues with Twitter are a few questions that interest me. Let’s wait for the engine before we talk about that.

Meanwhile, the Facebook vanity url brought out an interesting service from Social Too. According to RWW, Social Too is “extending our existing Facebook profile redirect URLs, which redirect yourusername.socialtoo.com to your Facebook profile, and adding an additional layer of analytics to the whole process. So tonight, you’ll be able to get a Facebook vanity URL and get the SEO benefits, but the URL you’ll want to hand out to all your friends will be your SocialToo vanity URL because we’ll provide statistics around those clicking on the URL, the browsers they’re using, where they’re located, and where they’re clicking from.” This would be a very useful resource for brands and even people, just ask any blogger who obsesses over page views 😉

So what is Facebook upto? I just read that Facebook has rolled out a beta version of its news search that allows people to search their News Feeds and brings up results chronologically from their streams. It means that I can now easily see what my friends think about a recent event/product/service, and that can be notes, videos, status messages, photos etc. ( I did ask for that 🙂 ) The kind of search results that used to get displayed in the earlier avatar of search (people, groups etc) are now listed on the side. (via Tech Crunch) Wonder if it searches comments on the shared content too? Also, thanks to this beastly tweet from Karthik 😉 ,  I noticed that there is a location tab in my newsfeed now. Nothing much for now, but that is a start, and they could add events, among other things. For instance, since a lot of people are auto updating their Twitter status on to FB, I noticed quite a few with the #cisia tag, which is for an event happening in Bangalore. But both the friends using the tag are from Mumbai, so they don’t show up in the Bangalore feed. But yes, it is a start.

So it does seem that Bing’s launch and the simultaneous bundling of One Riot with IE8 (One Riot is a real time social search engine) has shaken the search box a bit, especially in the realm of real time, though it could be just a coincidence. I have wondered why Bing didn’t launch with some One Riot like mechanism, that would really have been a differentiator, at least in the short term. A reason why I should use Bing, which seems the problem that MS should be addressing.

Before we end, while we’re on Search, a couple of services I came across that you might want to look at. Hunch, a new discovery engine, from Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, helps you answer questions, basis its understanding of you from the questions it asks you and your further usage of the site. Yep, this is a decision engine which asks you a few questions first 🙂 Mashable has a full analysis on it. I’ve just started using it a couple of days back, and it takes some time to get used to, and what it can do for you is directly proportional to the time you spend on it. So the task for Hunch would be to keep nudging people to interact with it more.  While I did start with a simple question, for which the sponsored link was an obvious choice, i think the question-answer way of search gives sponsored links a lot of relevance. I like the me+crowd way of answering questions and I think it just be the kind of service that grows on you. The other service I came across is Aardvark (via WATBlog – and they’re giving away free invites) which again uses a community network (via IM) to answer your queries.

Google has claimed that search is in its infancy and there are many avenues for new and existing avenues to explore. Now while Hunch and Aardvark seem to be great products, if Google puts its mind to it, there’s no reason why it cannot replicate either of the services, especially considering the data it has of me from its various services I am a user of. Also, Wave, when it happens, can build on the power of incremental networks easily.  If the microblogging engine does emerge it will give Google the path to real time too.  The advantage for now, is that once these services reach a certain usage level, a me-too product, even from Google will have to work hard on getting people to jump ship, simply because of the lethargy and the time, content etc already invested.

until next time, the search continues