the blog: tag= socialsearch

Y! Search is delicious

Date: 1/19/2008 11:36:00 AM [permalink]
Author: yahooza
Entry: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=java&fr=&ei=UTF-8&tmpl=H057
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/19/delicious-integrated-into-yahoo-search-results/
Hmm, Y! Social Search has finally integrated del.icio.us meta data into Y! search results (see above). It had always been talked about, integrating user-generated content form del.icio.us and Answers to help guide search users to get whatever they are seeking.

From a product standpoint, it's nice that it links tags back to del.icio.us. I do wonder how the algorithm calculates and weighs URLs. On the flip side, does it make sense to promote such an obscure brand into a mainstream product? Wouldn't it be better just to use the meta information from del.icio.us to help promote / demote search results, sans the branding? What if other web 2.0 were to be integrated into the overall search experience? Personally, I prefer the subtle integration of Flickr into image search.

Overall, good and bad. That's worth two cents.
Labels: del.icio.us, socialsearch, yahoo, ysearch
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Friend feed

Date: 10/05/2007 12:32:00 AM [permalink]
Author: yahooza
Entry: Some former Googlers created, friendfeed.com, the ultimate social-networking mini-feed / news-feed, aggregating all your favorite media webapps together so you can share and compare w/ all the same buddies on all the same sites that .... yeah, let's just say it's complicated =P

Now, do you see why an open API is good for your site?

So, here's mine: http://friendfeed.com/yahooza. Or you can subscribe via RSS.

Sign up / register to gain access to the private beta and add me so we can be friends and I can feed you my crap.

FRIENDS! YAY! WOO HOO! BFFs! YAY!
Labels: socialsearch
Comments: 1 +add yours

What makes a social network

Date: 9/21/2007 11:30:00 AM [permalink]
Author: yahooza
Entry: I have to admit, Y! Answers makes me proud. It's became a social network even before the team even released Network feature — you know, where you can add a friend or become a fan.

How? Because it's a "place", a destination for the Answers addicts to share thoughts, opinions and the cold, hard facts! A lot of relationships were born just by asking, answering and discovering, w/o the need to 'befriending'.

Building people connections (see digg.com's new social feature and mash.yahoo.com) can build your corpus of users, but it might not bring together a solid, like-minded community.

Social networking is not all about the number of connections you have, the number of folks in your network.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken! =P
Labels: socialsearch, yanswers
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Answers of Arabia

Date: 5/14/2007 09:42:00 PM [permalink]
Author: yahooza
Entry: http://whatstheplot.com/blog/2007/05/14/a....

I wonder if the Answers codebase, specifically the CSS, can handle the right-to-left layout w/out much tinkering. Inquiring minds want to know .... http://www.d1g.com/qna

The first Answers copycat had been http://knowledge.livedoor.com. It's changed a little bit since its launch which incorporated the same alien-blood green design as well as an indentical Q/A user experience. It did, however, allowed users to tag their content.

Of course, there's Microsoft's Live QnA which also injected the Answers green into their visual design. It's gone now, much like the hype around it.

Lycos UK also delivered a QnA site, http://iq.lycos.co.uk. The feature that I recalled that looked the same had been it's search-ahead, type-ahead widget when asking a question. It seems to be gone now; I reckon it's been yanked due to being a performance hog as it throttles search constantly. That's my guess.

And, of course, there's Linkedin's Answers service.

Am I missing any?
Labels: qna, socialsearch, yanswers
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Where's Waldo?

Date: 4/25/2007 01:17:00 PM [permalink]
Author: yahooza
Entry: So I've finallllllly left Y! Search, doing the internal transfer dance back to the main campus. Now, I'm 'doin' mah thang' on the i18n Tiger Team, mostly adapting webapps (HTML-based, Flash-based, client-side frameworks, server-side libs, etc.) to support multiple languages. I've always believed all software should be language-agnostic, much like how Answers has been deployed to 15-20 diff. countries. It's much harder than people think and certainly much more than just encoding your content as UTF-8. I've got lots to learn ....

It's bittersweet to leave after watching the team grow from the 8-10 weekend warriors to over 60+, the number of servers shooting from 15-20 to 250+ presently .... a total of 20 action-packed, drama-ridden months in Social Search, beginning in August 2005 .... the Answers Beta, the Donald Trump barrage, the GA release, the "Ask the Planet" campaign, late-night Mario Kart racin', the Superstar award ceremony at Spago, the Better Bookmarks launch, del.icio.us stuff (top secret) and finally the Peeps network ....

It's been one hellava run.
Labels: career, del.icio.us, i18n, socialsearch, yanswers, ybookmarks
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It's a runaway for Social Search

Date

1/03/2007 11:41:00 AM [permalink]

Author

yahooza

Entry

Drat, Better Bookmarks didn't make it.

--

del.icio.us and Answers named to PC World's Web's Most Useful Sites
Excellent news for del.icio.us and Yahoo! Answers - PC World’s year-end round-up of the Web’s Most Useful Sites has named del.icio.us and Yahoo! Answers winners in the Bookmark Manager and Answer Sites categories. Yahoo! won five of the 15 categories and is a runner up in three additional categories.

- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128248-.... (Article overview)
- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128.... (del.icio.us ranking)
- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,1282.... (Answers ranking)

Complete list of rankings:

Winner – Bookmark Managers: Del.icio.us (runners up - Ma.gnolia.com, StumbleUpon)
Winner – Answer Sites: Yahoo! Answers (runner up - Microsoft QnA)
Winner – Web Mail: Yahoo! Mail
Winner – Event Calendars: Upcoming.org
Winner – Best Widget Engine: Yahoo! Widgets
Runner-up – User Review Sites: Yahoo! Local
Runner-up – Mapping Services: Yahoo! Maps Beta
Runner-up – Web-based Calendars: Yahoo! Calendar

Labels: del.icio.us, socialsearch, upcoming, yahoo, yanswers

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