Google's community search

Google's analyst day thoughts. 1) Google is testing out community-based searches along the lines of the companies I've been writing about, such as PreFound (Tuesday's Net Sense), Plum, Jeteye and Kaboodle. Google's Co-op product (in beta of course) is a way for thought-leaders, guides, experts to share their searches. Essentially, anyone can sign up by going to Google.com/coop and create a page of things they've searched for and assign or label it with a topic that can be searched by someone else. Similar to the other aforementioned services I had written about, I can create a topic, say "Hawaii" and put all the information I searched about into that page. Others can collaborate on that topic as well. That page is public for others to search on. As an expert on that topic Hawaii, I become a guide of sorts. It's the About model reborn. The difference is that these guides are found in a search paradigm. With Google's co-op program, the search giant can create verticals rich with information created by people. I think it's a great idea because communities do add a layer of relevance above and beyond what machines can do.
2) Google's Schmidt said that social networks are great, but they don't make any money. He was elaborating on a question I asked about whether MySpace having its own search engine would be a concern to Google. He said that he'd like to get involved with social networks by helping them make money. I asked if he had to partner with these communities, like MySpace. He just smiled, suggesting that I could probably figure out whether Google would want to or not.  3) I asked if Google is building AdWords for video, and whether he thought AdWords for video would work. He said that if someone invents AdWords for Google, he'd check it out. 4) I was testing out my Logitech Webcam to do video interviews. It worked fine when I interviewed Esther Dyson, but unfortunately, by the time I tried to interview Google executives, it didn't work. Oh well. Technology isn't perfect. For instance, all day Google's WiFi network failed to work.

Comments

[Steve]

The direction that Google is taking with their Co-op technology would certainly make the subjects we tackled at the Derby Roundtable even more timely than we knew. Who knew that Google would be interested in a "community" aspect of search, since they've been so silent on the subject until now. It might be good to keep in mind that, unlike some of the sites out there that have been paving the way in social search (you mention a few above), Google Co-op isn't all that accessible yet. Many mainstream users, even the more technical ones, might be a little thrown by Google's "getting started guide" that says, "The API was designed to be as easy to use as possible, and requires only basic XML skills. This guide will show you how to create subscribed links, with plenty of examples along the way." So, maybe it's good that the Google thing is still in beta. On the good side, it really validates the notion that social search is the search of the future. The questions remain... will Google have all the answers (their implementation looks a little immature to me, and a lot like Yahoo Subscriptions, which has not taken off), or will it be Google partnering with someone, or will it be something else entirely?

[Venkat Venkatraman]

I think this is Google's move into the world of blogs and wikis more seriously. I am surprised that they have not actively integrated Orkut into Google's suite of services. Clearly, Google trends is one way to slice-and-dice historical search data but it is still at a very high level. Social community-based search is more lkely to be relevant. I like to see what Microsoft does with social search as well. Clearly search-linked-to-advertising and marketing will become more important than ever before. This is the next evolution in how we compete in networks.