alexmikro.net » Web 2.0

Social search now by Google

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:41:05 +0000

Google has just launched a new search service based on social data: Google Social Search. It works like this: if you have a Google profile, you can add the social networks you’re a member of (e.g. Twitter or FriendFeed). Then, when you do a Google search, you will also get results that have to do with your friends, like a post from a friend’s blog. Of course, if you don’t add this information to your Google profile, or if you are not logged into your Google account when you do a search, you won’t get any social results.

Here’s a demo video of this new service. You might notice that Google is quite concerned about privacy issues, reassuring us about the transparency of the service throughout the video:

Innovative startups for 2009

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:54:54 +0000

Erick Schonfeld, editor in TechCrunch, is wondering about the kinds of innovative startups we mostly need in 2009:

At the moment I’m writing this post, electric car batteries have the lead with 30%. Considering the serious global energy and pollution problems, I’ve voted for this option too. However, I’m sure we’re going to see lots of new Social Web startups in 2009, including social search tools and new mash-ups of Web 2.0 services.

The Social Web in plain English

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:13:07 +0000

The Social Web offers lots of opportunities for social networking. Through sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, you can connect with friends from real life, make new ones, and keep in touch with them. Also, through microblogging sites like Twitter, you can let your friends know what you’re up to any time of the day. It can get pretty addictive!

The Common Craft channel on YouTube has a series of clips explaining these (and many more) technologies in “plain English”. The following two clips are about social networking and microblogging:

The Social Web and You

Alexander Mikroyannidis — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:17:29 +0000

Web 2.0 can best be described as the accumulation of new web-based collaboration technologies, such as social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, wikis, blogs, and more. The success of Web 2.0 is mainly attributed to the fact that it appeals to the public through services, like syndication and tagging, that allow people to easily publish and share content. The wide acceptance of these technologies has resulted into what is sometimes referred to as the Social Web, a medium for the communication and collaboration of online communities.

A popular way for organizing content in the Social Web is labeling it with descriptive terms, which are called keywords or tags. This bottom-up collaborative process, which is called tagging, has been successfully used in most Social Web applications, where users tag web pages, photos and videos, so that they can later retrieve them, as well as share them with other users having common interests. The sets of categories derived from tagging are commonly referred to as folksonomies.

The Social Web has transformed each one of us from a passive receiver to an active producer of web content. The following video illustrates how: