Overhype

Overhype

by Mike Masnick




Why Should We Combine Social Networks And Search?

from the no,-really,-I'm-asking dept

I guess it's the business plan of the new year. Look for two hot spaces that venture capitalists are drooling over... and combine them. Don't bother stopping to think if it's useful at all. Okay, consider me skeptical, but open minded on this one. A new search engine, called Eurekster, is taking the "search advertising" trend and the "social networking" trend - and combining them. That's right. You'll now be able to run your searches through your friends. Why? I have no idea. I'm trying to think of a good example of why this would ever be useful - and I'm coming up blank. The idea is to personalize search results, and to pool a local set of users to figure out what might be more relevant. The problem with this, though, is that I imagine the things I search for are very different than what my friends search for the vast majority of the time. In the few areas where it's likely we'd overlap, I'm not sure what the benefit of having it tied in with them would be.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Jan 21st, 2004 @ 3:30pm

    Is it too late to patent this?

    by Joe Baderderm

    I don't know how this would work either. But I sure wish I had the patent on it.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Jan 25th, 2004 @ 1:52pm

    Eurekster

    I love how everyone poo-poo's an idea before even checking it out. Shame on you. Someone spends months, maybe years developing something and you shoot it down without even looking at it.

    Here is how I plan to use Eurekster. Maybe you'll derive some use from this. If not, be sure to criticize it as quickly as possible...

    What I am looking for in my eureksters (ie people in my eurekster network) is the following. I intend to only have people in my eurekster social network that are interested in social software, search engines, online marketing and event promotion. I will also limit my searches on eurekster to these topics. This way, my social network will help me determine the most important stuff going on in my chosen space(s) of interest.

    More at a new blog I started....
    http://eureksterblog.blogspot.com/2004_01_21_eureksterblog_archive.html

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Jan 28th, 2004 @ 4:48am

    Sounds cool but....

    Do you really want friends spying on your searches?
    The idea is different but scary. I wish them a lot of luck with that one.
    I would rather join backwash.com than to join some social search engine.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It