Issues to Consider in Social Search Computers in Libraries 2007 by Gary Price gary@resourceshelf.com http://www.resourceshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/socsearch.html or http://tinyurl.com/3x9lqh

• What does social mean when it comes to search and info organization?
• Large groups of unknown users, various interests, scattered around the globe, open to anyone
  
• Smaller groups (co-workers in the reference department at XXX Library)  OR
  
• A group of students
  
• Individual  use

• Will people participate?
• Product awareness, key issue
  
• Time to participate, OCLC Worldcat.org reviews as an example
  
• Time to maintain older content and URL's, the bigger the database gets the harder it 
  gets to maintain, keep current
  
• Will people claim there pages, authority control
  
• Will people stay with the projects, human nature, look at Wikipedia/Citizendium
  
• Interest in project(s)  (aka "The Prinicipe of Least Effort")

• Manipulation of the system & Other Issues?
• Spam, spam, spam
  
• Tag spam, Popularity tagging
  
• Size of Database vs. Quality of Resources (What matters most to a researcher might not matter as much to others
  
• Authority Control
  
  
• Quality of tags and other user assigned metadata
  
• Where do content-based image retrieval and dynamic clustering fit in
  
• Let the image or document/page, song, video, speak for itself, professionally compiled metadata
• Examples: Riya,LTU Tech, Clusty
• Example: Pandora (audio)
• Example: TVEyes

• How New is The Idea?
• If Social Search and directories also means HUMAN built directories and lists of resources then info pros have been doing this for years. Both subject specific and general purposel:
• Librarians' Internet Index
• Infomine
• IPL
• Intute
• globalEDGE

• Custom Search Engines
• Gigablast Custom Search
• Rollyo (Yahoo Database)
• Google Custom Search
• Live Search Macros (Live.com)
• Yahoo Search Builder (Yahoo)
• Swicki from Eurekster
  
• See New Article from Greg Notess

• Question Answering Services
• Wondir
• Yahoo Answers
• ChaCha
• uClue
• LinkedIn
• Where do QuestionPoint and other services fit in?
  

• Social Search and Sharing, 2.0
• Prefound
• Eureksters Swicki's
• Yahoo del.icio.us &  MyWeb 2.0 (Also Archives Each Saved page) 
• Trexy
• For Business Research: Competitious
• eSnips
• Sync2It
• Google Notebook
  

• Searching Blog/Feeds and Sharing Made Easier
• Ask.com Blog and Feed Search, note the buttons below each result
• MyStuff
• To some degree, Teoma, was the first social search, building on authoritative linking structures and user behavior
• Teoma technology powers Ask.com
• Ask's new IN DEVELOPMENT technology ("Edison") will take the next level 
• Looking at static web in combo with how people are actually using the web

• Searching Multiple Tagging Services Simultaneously
• Infopirate
  
• TalkDigger
• Wink (New Focus on People Search)
  MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Live Spaces, and other sources
  See Also: ZoomInfo
• TagBulb
• CrossEngine (Social Search Collection)

• Old School?, still useful
  
• BoardReader
• BoardTracker
• Yahoo Groups
• Google Groups

• Zoho Products
• Most Ready for sharing, group work