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