There’s a new social service that pairs search users in part by their similar queries, as well as pages visited
in web browsing and preferred interests. Others Online stands out from many social sites with its browser toolbar that when activated passively records demonstrated interests.
While a user is browsing they can check the Others toolbar to see who else is reading or interested in the topic or site, and a dropdown provides contact to their IM or email details—including a link to their MySpace profile or other social website.
So what this means is…. Every time you search Google, you see the people who relate to those same keywords, plus their Web pages, and you can connect with them instantly by IM or email.
There aren’t too many details on the site on how they track and weight users’ online movements, but it seems to cache much like Google Toolbar and feed users’ background profiles by keyword and url. Although one can clear their search cache, there’s no option to selectively delete.
Others Online will run contextual ads–based of course on its users web history–and says it offers companies a chance to build brand by retaining contact even when users have clicked away. via
Hello,
I know it has nothing to do with this post, but I just wanted to point out this site http://www.poisk.ru, I found in Russia, and which uses the word search in Russian (poisk) to do a funny copy of Google 🙂
The funny thing is that they do not use Google Adsense on the search result page, but Yandex Direct, which is the same system than Google Adsense, but proposed by YANDEX.ru, the leading Russian search engine.
Always funny to see how Google influences the world …
That Really is a good concept – and so practical – imagine, Reasearching information for your PhD Dissertation or Masters Thesis and connecting with similar minded researchers around the world – and instantly picking each others brains to get additional ideas.
Really surprising this did NOT get that many Diggs – even with the great title…go figur’
it may be the most useful tool in the US. but, it’s always been Friendster in the Philippines, and it’ll always be. :p
Nothing but a Spyware.
We’re doing something similar at Huckabuck.com. We have developed a Search Tuner that allows searchers to tune their results from 6 engines. We are finding that people are tuning their searches in similar ways. These similar settings become our presets. We are currently trying to build our traffic, and once our traffic reaches a certain point, Huckabuck will be able to tell a great deal about social search tendencies.
Heh. Isn’t this more or less what Dilbert developed a few months back?
This is a great idea. To my mind people get overly worried about privacy in this area. It is important but if you work with a trusted service provider there is immense value to be gained from tracking and mining clickstreams on a named basis.
Execution is everything though and selective deleting and/or multiple identities will be key.