1. So I'm searching for bondage and discipline sites. And those searches and links become visible to people outside that intimate context. Then I'm bookmarking the bios of management at a competitor we're gonna try to buy out, but the shared searches tip our hand, blowing the deal.

Context management is everything. Right now, I don't have to think about how I'm going to use my search before I ask Google a question. So Google has a markedly lower cognitive burden than the socially powered search engines. Their success depends completely on driving down that user transaction cost while preserving context.

So discipline means the right things to the right people in my life. Without my having to think about it.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Phil Wolff

2. Hi, I really enjoy your blog. It's been great using it to keep up with the latest developments in the industry.

Could you send me a gmail account? Thanks a lot!

Steve

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Steve Jay

3. Lets just hope Eurekster doesn't go public and charge $100+ per share :-)

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Eurekster

4. Ever since internet search disintermediated the paper phone directory, local community search has been frustrating. Recent attempts to overlay an advertising based directory structure - like the phone book model, ontop of the unstructured results retuend by search doesn't seem to help much.

Eurekster approach may have a lot to offer local search in effect adding a reputation factor to local search.

Appreciate a look at gmail.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by peterlake

5. I love Kartoo.com. I do social network mapping for all sorts of purposes and reasons, and Kartoo fits my need to be both social, funny and productive

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Maryann Durland

6. I like the idea of allowing people to protect their searches online.
Does it follow that eurekster will not censor search results from users?

Google says they do not censor content, yet they will reject AdWords campaigns that they judge to be controversial, regardless of whether they are protected by the 1st amendment.

Here's hoping eurekster will have a more lenient AUP, though since they take their submissions via Yahoo & Overture, it looks like they're staying out of it.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by _debra

7. pretty please?

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by _debra

8. HI Judith!

I have been a reader of your blog for a couple of months now. This is where I get news and happenings about social software. Right now I am working on a blog app with social network elements. It's coming out soon.

Jeff
PS: Please send me a gmail invite. Thanks.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Jeff Kang

9. Is something to be answered. Don't think its inherently so, rather its often private and/or intimate. "I am what I search on" so what do I want out there for the world to see? On the other hand there is a social nature to active sharing of "things I've found useful", so would be great if the search tools can facilitate "active" or deliberate sharing and management.

gmail me? thanks!

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Barnaby

10. I think it's important to have well defined domains within which people share their information with the community for the good of the overall search results. On http://www.musicmobs.com users upload their entire listening habits in order to have their music represented in the community and to receive music recommendations tailored to them. You could imagine other specialized media "search" engines working in a similar fashion.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Toby Padilla

11. Friendster has web search powered by Eurekster, and on any search at any time, you can mark it "private" and it won't go into the search results pile.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Mike

12. Ideally, people would not want to disclose those hard-learnt search techniques, which has been learnt over a period of time. But, I guess that for internal use in a particular business, the services provided by the newer search engines might be useful. At times, we really want to share with what we discovered, but would want to share it with those persons who too cna give us something in return. So, maybe the community might be divided on those aspects - people sharing their stuff with those from whom they can gain eventually - like in real social life.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Nirav

13. It seems to me that, in some way, Google must be aware of the potential here. The idea that with a very low level search (ie. first name only) you could end up with someone's profile seems the obvious next step from Orkut & Google & Gmail. By combining what is becoming a huge database on actual people with what is already an enormous one on what people look for, and cross-referencing locational trends and availability of products, it seems to me as though Google has already positioned (or, if you consider the 'beta' tags that seem to trail every announcement recently, is positioning) itself to leapfrog all other attempts, and to create a truly global network of information, be it personal, corporate, positional, or as you want it.

As the poster above notes with musicmobs, which is a fantastic service, there are already databases for almost everything. But wouldn't it be better if i googled "John Smith" and got his address (if released), email (likewise), favorite music, most recently seen movies, his website, and resume (if available) as well as photo?

It seems to me we are reaching an age where sending your resume to a company could well be redundant. As could the oft-repeated instant messenger question "so what are you listening to lately?"

Once there is a wealth of data available, it only remains to be seen who can create the network of relationships first, and their current steps, while small, make me think that Google has a better grasp of the potential than any new challengers. Does this make it a $100/share stock? No comment.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Wil Turner

14. I Google (as opposed to "Vivisimoing", "Eurekstering" or "Grokkering") for three reasons
1) I trust Googles’ service, its authority and its ‘net citizenship credentials
2) Google gives me access to an unlimited information repository
3) Google makes me feel good about my ability to data mine and locate the information that I want

Social searching services will have to convince me that my social network
1) Will not use my data mining attempts for their own malevolent purposes,
2) Offers me greater authority than my present service
3) Can locate relevant and unlimited amounts of data and finally
4) Can give better results than Google.

Looks like the marketing department behind these social searching services have to come up with an amazing marketing plan.
PS I would like a gmail account. Thanks.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Derek

15. There are still A LOT of people who aren't very web-savvy, don't have personal home pages, let alone profiles on social networking sites. So when I want to "Google" someone, it's to my benefit to have the broadest range of information possible . . . the entire web.

I find people all the time this way: someone who's just mentioned in a newspaper article, or just listed on their church's web site, or just has an entry for winning the 100 meters in college . . . and can't be found ANYWHERE else online.

I think there will always be a segment of the poplulation that exists more offline than on, and has little interest in social networks. There's no way to share searches with this group either. I actually know people (real people) in their late 20s and early 30s who don't have email and don't regularly use the internet. Granted, I assume the number of people like this is diminishing, but it will never reach zero.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Dan

16. I like to use the analogy of the brain when considering the future of search engines. Acummulating huge amounts of data is no problem, establishing relationships between data and quickly locating relevant data will be an ongoing process of optimization. It seems clear that the next easily exploited advance can be made in localization, finding things relevant to you based on where you are. Another great relationship to mine is data from images. If you could search images for characteristics of the image itself rather than a filename, it would be really useful. This is where the problem of search falls within the domain of artificial intelligenence. Recognizing patterns and extrapolating relationships is an extremely complex task, but it is a necessary step to create intelligent systems. A search engine of Google's size that could quickly access relevant information, and have tables of relationships between data objects would be a powerful component upon which to build an intelligence framework.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Jeremy

17. will answer one post with a link to a google query that answers the original post's question. Rather than respond with the answer or a link, this hands the answer back as a hit list only colored by the search terms used. Sorry that I don't have a link to an exact example at Slashdot.

And if those gmail invitations are still available, I'd love to take you up on your offer.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Keith Krieger

18. Indeed, having relationships to information is one of the greatest challenges to searching.

One of the futures of search is the ability to weed out your results not based on keywords but on ideas and relationships. When I search for a "Recumbent Bicycle" i dont want to have to add extra terms such as -exercise -gym -fitness to weed out all the non-street bike results. That's only going to do so much, and it's counter-intuitive. There needs to be an easy, well-designed way to weed out results by topic. Such as the search results with statements like "There were 65,000 results related to road bicycling" and "There were 44,001 results that have to do with home fitness". And so on and so forth. And a little X next to each of those to dynamically remove those from results. Naturally you could expand/collapse those topics with subtopics and you could X out as well. Or add back those results in the future.

And the search will remember that I typically search for road bike stuff, rather than home fitness stuff, and will automatically weed out that stuff. And I can dynamically put that stuff back in too.

This would be most ideal if I dont have to reload the page anytime I do any of this customisation. It just needs to happen at the click of the mouse, presumably using some sort of javascript or equivalent.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Brian Warren

19. Hi, I really enjoy your blog. It's been great using it to keep up with the latest developments in the industry of social software. I hadn't really realized that such a site existed and was so on top everything untill a month ago.

Could you send me a gmail account? Thanks a lot!

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Andrew

20. 69 gmail accounts! What a bounty of riches!

I'll take one off your hands, please. Thanks, Judith.

Posted at 8:03PM on Dec 18th 2005 by JD Lasica