Some people confuse social search with social networking sites.
Social search is searching for people – essential for recruiters. Great for librarians who want to interview people who know ‘stuff’ that’s not written down yet. Add reporters and detectives to the mix and you see there are loads of people who need people. I’ll avoid commenting on the dating site phenomenon other than to note that I read that about 10% of all marriages in the US last year were between people who first met on the Internet.
Social networking sites allow people to make their networks sustainable, collaborate, share and do ‘social’ things that are very humna – learn, lobby, share, connect, etc.
One is about retrieval and the other is about the experience.
Google released a Facebook application on August 27th. Built on Google’s AJAX Search API, the app lets you share your results with your friends. You just hit “Share” next to any result to share that result in your feed. You might want to do this if you share a specific interest with most of your friends – a class project, a charitable effort, a band, etc.
Mashable has a list of 40+ Social Search Engines. – some of which are people powered and others
Stephen
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