First of all, what is Social Search?
Social Search is finding information from real people.
Just like Web Search provided a revolutionary way to find web pages that have the information you’re looking for, Social Search is a revolutionary way to find people that have the information you’re looking for. In both cases, intelligent search indexing is a vast improvement over the manual process of following links or browsing through directories.
Social Search lets you tap into the wisdom of your social network through real conversations — it’s an easy way to access the knowledge and experience of people you’re connected to.
We believe that Aardvark is the first product that fully realizes the potential of Social Search.
What’s so great about Social Search?
Consider this: I have about 200 friends on Facebook, and they each have about 200 friends. Altogether I have over 10,000 friends and friends-of-friends in my extended network. These 10,000 people have a lot in common with me: many share my school and work affiliations and my cultural reference points. I’m interested in the choices they make and the experiences they have — they are usually more relevant to me than the opinions expressed by anonymous strangers on the web.
That’s why Social Search is especially great for subjective questions, and questions where context is important to getting the information I want. We’ve noticed that Aardvark users find Social Search to be complementary to Web Search, which is still great for objective information that can be found on a specific web page.
At any given time, thousands of the people I am connected to are online, sitting at their computers or on their mobile phones. And, we’ve found, they’re happy to help a friend out with an answer or an opinion at a moment of need — everyone likes being helpful!
My 10,000 friends and friends-of-friends can help me in my daily life:
- they’ve been to places in my neighborhood that I’d like to find
- they’ve used products that I’m thinking of buying, traveled to places I’m thinking of going
- they’ve worked with people who can help me with my own job and career
- they’ve solved technology problems that I’m struggling with
- the list goes on… homework help, relationship advice, book recommendations…
Who else writes about Social Search?
Aardvark is our ideal of what Social Search should be. We think that it speaks to a need that many leading thinkers in this area have been expressing.
We agree with Jyri Engestrom and Hugh Macleod about the importance of “Social objects”. We’re encouraged that Fred Wilson can Twitter a question and get a “smart” answer from one of his 11,000 followers (what if everyone had that power?). We’re excited by Seth Godin’s challenge to solve the Needle in the Haystack Problem. We agree with Marissa Mayer’s ideas about The Future of Search.
Most of all, we’re excited to let the world unleash the latent power in their networks — to finally get real utility out of our social graphs. And to have an easy way to help all the other folks we’re connected to in return.
Stay tuned here for more on Social Search, or check out our white paper about this exciting area…
11 Comments
This is great!
As I’ve been reading and writing in the space of social search, I realize that there are lots of definitions of “social search.” No one is better than another. They are not mutually exclusive. But it may be worthwhile to acknowledge the others. Aardvark seems to be a people-finder / question-answer system—very similar to Mark Ackerman’s Answer Garden, actually. Pooling results over a large number of users (a la social recommendations) is another. I think both models have potential to aid searchers, but they will be relevant for different types of information needs.
Finding friends-of-friends (of friends) to help with search is also compelling. Two issues I see with social information seeking is: 1) people don’t want to bother their friends and 2) totally anonymous replies may be meaningless. (Of course it depends on the question being asked.) Aardvark’s model seems to minimize both of these risks by letting users post questions semi-anonymously, having them routed to available “experts”, and yet knowing that replies may be from someone you trust. It would be really interesting to test perceived trust, relevance, confidence, etc. from the users who pose questions (after they receive replies).
One limitation I see with an approach like this is that the value may be limited by the type of question being asked. Yes, this is great for subjective questions. But a number of questions are exploratory in nature (more open-ended, “informational” queries [under Andrei Broder's taxonomy]). For example: How can I export video from my new Canon HD camcorder in an uncompressed format? I watched 3 searchers struggle to find an answer to this question for 30 minutes: They used each other, online forums, other web search, and finally called a customer support representative. Not only was the information very hard to find, they didn’t even know what an answer would “look like.” Obviously social interactions can greatly aid cases like this (as it did), but it might take more than a one-time exchange over IM. Have you thought about how to extend interactions or carry-over interactions to other media where conversations could persist longer?
Hey guys - exciting stuff! Thanks for the nice summary, and also the links at the end. I’ve enjoyed seeing the product develop and am really looking forward to the full launch at SXSW. I think this is going to be very big.
I’m intrigued, and have signed up to participate.
Without knowing the specifics of how my questions on Vark will be answered, i’ll ask a couple: How do you notify friends of open questions without overloading the friend network with noise? And how can I expect real-time answers from working friends during work hours?
Hey Mike -
People can control their contact settings on Aardvark (e.g., only contact me once a day / once a week, or not on weekends, etc.) — and since the questions are intelligently routed, there’s very little noise.
During working hours answers are generally *faster*, since so many people are at their computers on IM.
Hey Mike -
Rob has some good points. I’ve found that Aardvark is incredibly helpful during work, as I’m able to ask my coworkers questions about my neighborhood. In fact, the settings have allowed me to enjoy meals with friends and their acquaintances during my lunch hour. My settings have ensured that I do not receive questions while I’m eating pizza and soda.
I’m hooked on using Aardvark at work. I use it to get answers from people in my own IT department, our sales force, and in our overseas office - whom I trust, but whom I would not have found without this great service. Aardvark has made my company connected like it’s never been before. I don’t know how the algorithm is so on target, but it seems like it is always hitting the employee I’m looking for.
What an incredible corporate tool! I’m currently leading two trans-Atlantic teams who have found the speed and accuracy incredible. There was a time when one of my most resourceful workers was being inundated with requests for help, but once he changed his settings, the questions have become more evenly distributed. Now, when I ask, who wants to get lunch, my colleague in London answers - do you mean dinner.
I have not read this in any detail, but have you read about Cynthia Kurtz and Dave Snowden’s ideas about social network stimulation? Is definitely worth considering.
[...] Just like Web Search provided a revolutionary way to find web pages that have the information you’re looking for, Social Search is a revolutionary way to find [...]
Stunning, I did not know about that up to the present. Thanx.
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