Searchles: The Next Generation of Search?
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Online companies that include user-generated content as a huge part of their business model have been around for a few years now. This model is even being used with search engines, with del.icio.us as the most prominent example. But there’s a new search engine that takes that model even further, and it’s definitely worth a look.
It’s called “Searchles,” a mashup of the words “search” and “circles,” and it’s pronounced “circles.” It’s because the three-month-old search engine, an offshoot of Dumbfind, emphasizes circles of friends to make it work. “You can think of it as a cross between MySpace and a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us or Furl,” explained Dumbfind spokesman Eric Young. “It’s all about connecting to your friends and sharing information and making everything easily searchable.”
Users of Searchles take advantage of a double box system that lets them explore their topic by keyword, tag, or both. If you are a registered user, you can submit pages and sites to the search engine, and use tags to distinguish them and help you find them again. So far, so good; it doesn’t sound that much different from del.icio.us, or any other Web 2.0 site that uses tags or votes or whatever to let its community decide what is relevant.
The key difference is in the amount of fine-grained control in the hands of users. With many social search sites, when you search tags or keywords, you’re searching everyone’s tags. How do you know that those tags are reliable? For example, let’s say that you’re an advanced guitar player and you’re interested in sites to help you with your music. Think about all the beginning guitar players out there. The sites they tag as most relevant for guitar are not going to be nearly as relevant to you, because you’re more advanced than they are, so you already know a lot of that stuff.
Searchles has an answer for that. Once you’re a registered user, you can search in various “circles.” You can search everywhere; that’s the default. Or you can search through only the sites you’ve posted. You can search through sites that have been submitted by your friends. You can search through sites submitted by various groups you’ve joined. You can search through sites submitted by friends of friends. And you can search through sites submitted by “your fans” – people who admire you. (I have to wonder if that particular feature redefines the term “ego-scanning”).
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