WebProNews

Is Google Digging Itself?

Rumors had floated for weeks Google was negotiating to buy Digg.com for purposes of enhancing Google News. But it looks like Google is already integrating Digg-like features in a surprisingly open round of testing in the search results. With Google's slate of engineers, one wonders why they would buy a site if they could replicate the same idea. Imagine results created by users voting them up or down, results users can comment on and rate the comments of others.

Does "Social Search" Make Sense?

As several people are reporting this morning, the search engine Hakia has added a new feature called “Meet Others,” in which you can see whether other people using the tool are searching for the same things you are. I confess that, like Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web, I am wondering what the point of this feature is exactly. Do social networking features make any sense as part of a search tool?

How Stumbleupon's Beating Google, Yahoo & MSN

Stumbleupon is one of may favorite social media sites, Not only can it drive traffic that matches or often exceeds that of Digg, stumbleupon users are much less critical/confrontation/judgmental than the typical Digg user.

Public Privacy and The Advent of Social Search

Remember the old adage: It's better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Means a lot coming from me, a writer, I know, but on the Internet, for people with less public jobs than my own, it might be a good thing to remember.

Social Search & Personalization

Gord Hotchkiss recently posted about how he thought personalization was Google's trump card in social search. DigitalGhost noticed that Yahoo! hired some of the best sociology professors in the world, including Duncan J. Watts.

Social Search - The Future of Image Search

[Disclaimer: I'm CEO of Zooomr, we are building both a social based image search system as well as a stock photography platform]

Rumor: StumbleUpon To Be Acquired By eBay

Reports surfacing about a possible eBay/StumbleUpon deal have created quite a buzz throughout the blogosphere over the last 24 hours. Forsaking the significance that such a deal could have in the silently mounting animosity between Google and eBay, the rumored details of acquisition weave an interesting tale in and of themselves. Headlines on the acquisition front have, by in large, been dominated by Google over the last six months, starting with the company’s highly publicized and now much scrutinized purchase of YouTube.

SES: Humans? That's HOT

SES New York reached out to attendees in one session where moderator Chris Sherman enabled the conversation on social search.

Social Search - The Next Big Thing?

Search technology has been marked by a few big leaps in its history. What began with relatively crude algorithmic analysis of the content of individual pages was improved dramatically by Google’s sophisticated use of off-page criteria, notably PageRank and link anchor text analysis. While refinements continue - Google now reportedly uses more than a hundred or two criteria in its rankings, held together by complex weighting schemes - the basic nature of search technology hasn’t changed much lately.

Is Search Going Social?

Finding true relevance in search results is becoming the new focus of users who are looking to the web for their information needs. For years, the algorithm has been the standard method that search engines have employed to determine relevance and deliver comprehensive results. Social search, however, could represent a change in search philosophy. Even though Google prides itself with impressive algorithms and the latest in anti-spam technology, are search engines like Google truly succeeding at delivering results that are relevant to search terms?