Socially Connected Search

Mark Ury put a link on Twitter that poses an interesting theory about email as the social network. Om Malik also referred to this in his post a year back asking the question, is email the ultimate social network?

Leaving aside the fact that the younger generation is using email less as a means of communication, I have to wonder as we become more ingrained in network culture, if the notion of email as the platform is completely missing the mark?

While our address books are certainly reflective of who we know, email is for the most part a means of communication with our strong ties. One of the advantages of social networks are its ability to leverage the connections of our weak ties as we all acknowledge that in real life, managing 250 'friends' would be a pretty difficult task.

So I'm not buying what Om says in his post:

"The only way for Yahoo or Google to challenge the social networking incumbents like Facebook [is] to leverage their email infrastructure ..."

Why? Because to me, Google in particular has another infrastructure that seems much more relevant - their search infrastructure. While everyone focuses on serving more relevant and 'personalized' ads, I have to wonder why they aren't also putting equal focusing on connecting people who search for like minded information? After all, if they did that, then as I developed those connections over time, I could then start to search like those individuals I'm connected to or see what content they thought was most relevant based on their searches - and even discover new searches that might be of interest to me?

I've touched on this type of search before. So in my mind it won't be email as a socially connected platform, it will be search.

(This blog post was written with a baby in my arms so excuse any mistakes or fumbled grammar :)

New Product Idea: Blogger Trading Post

I recently contacted some 'blogger friends' (that means i haven't met them in person but know them intimately through comments and other virtual networks of social ability) about getting some research in the various markets where they live.

I mean after all, it's one thing for me to find research, it's another to get it filtered by people who actually live and work in the country I'm researching. Got me to thinking about the notion of blog trading. You know, a little bit of you give me some tech trends in SE Asia and, I'll send you some cultural changes about families in North America.

What do you think?


photocredit: www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/exhibits/traders/

Wanted: A Social Network Tagging System To Reinvent Search

This idea started for me a while back. At oponia, we had the idea of creating a new way of organizing and searching a document system through tags (that we never got funding for *sigh*). I wrote about it in my post tag and flow: connecting the end points.

And then Fraser and I started a conversation about hierarchies and friendships that has continued over at the Adaptive Blue blog.

The concept is relatively simple. I have this ever growing network of social connections, both implicit and explicit. But as with everything in life, people have different meaning to me and if I get really utilitarian about it, they also have different value.

My friend David Chant as an example, owner of the Electric Company. You might go to Dave's site and think, Dave is a motion graphics expert based on his company. But because I personally know Dave, I know him as the gadget guy. You want to buy a new tech toy? David is the guy to talk to. And if I was going to "search" through a search engine about a new gadget, I wouldn't want to search like Leigh (because I wouldn't know the first thing about new tech gadgets, bc I just go ask Dave), I would want to search like Dave.

...What if I could somehow connect my search to Dave? What if I could tag to explicitly define our relationship - Dave as 'friend' and also tag what I think he's an expert in - in this case, 'technology' 'gadget'? It would allow me to potentially then use Dave's search intelligence for my own.

Well, that's great. But what if it could then get even more interesting and we could connect Dave to all the other people who have been tagged as experts in 'technology' and 'gadgets'? Wouldn't I theoretically be able to have a socially created vertically brilliant search engine?

Ok, I don't have time now to do this start up (other than continued oponia activities, I have a doll company i want to start which will never get or require VC money), but I think someone else should get to it because I need a new and better search engine.

New Product Idea

A Swiffer for eye make-up.

You know when you get those little blotchy spots when your putting on eye make-up because you do the unthinkable, blink....

Instead of a QTip which smudges it more and pulls your skin, you could have a thin eye make-up swiffer stick that gently gets the tiny spot off without taking your make-up off.

I bet you we could get that lady who started Spanx to invest. Talk about brand extension!

New Product Idea

Company Name: Elgoog
Mission : To be a thorn in Google's side

Launch Product:

The Google Views Obfuscation System

A set of lasers that creates a bubble around your home that obfuscates Google Views from being able to broadcast your piece of the world. I am thinking our first niche market would be movie stars who don't want their comings and goings relayed to the various stalker elements out there.

New Product Idea

GPS social network for traffic spotting.

When I was in San Fran, my friend Peter Jin Hong had the cool gadget of the day with his GPS screen that slapped onto the window on the car. He just put in our destination and the sultry computer voice with a British accent told him to "keep to the right hand side of the road and turn at the next intersection."

Well, what if i could join a social network for my drive home? What if I could get driving advice and warnings from all the other silly commuters back and forth from Toronto to past Orangeville?

She could say things like "there is a speed trap at the top of the Caledon hill, proceed with caution" or "drivers have indicated that there is extensive traffic to come onto the Gardner Expressway, keep to the right and use the Queensway off ramp"

New Product Idea

Electronic business cards. Now, now I know what you are thinking. We've seen those before and they are silly. But I am not talking about the mini screened put flash video on a display kinda card. It's more inspired by the post that Mark Evans had a while back on "long live the paper business card".

Ok enough confusing prelude. Here's the idea. A paper like looking business card with only one thing on it, a url, that can actually hyperlink to the web if a mouse is put on it.

Eric our hyper smart programmer looked at me quizzically when I suggested this to him. At first i think he was thinking, “you have no idea the way the Web works lady do you?” and on second hand he took a moment, sat back in his chair and said, "hum, i am sure we could figure out a way to do that with blue tooth and a button you could push that would open the Web browser to the url." That's what I like! Little problem solution....sure beats the mocking....;)

New Product Idea of the Day

I look forward to anyone who might know of something that can do this:

1. A bookmark saver tool that on one click will let me save all my open tab windows in firefox but only for a specified period of time - say 2 days. I always end up with all these windows open with these great articles i want to read, but then something comes up and I have to go. Leaving them all opened is annoying - bookmarking them when i only want to read rather than save is annoying....I need more an in the moment and then self-destruct kind of bookmarking tool.

2 New Product Ideas

1. The "Doh" Detector:
An email client that would automagically know when you wrote an email referencing a link or attached document but forgot to actually put in the link or attach the document

2. Skunk Smell Begone, No But Really....:
I would pay almost anything if I was told that something would get rid of this damn smell (for the record, having your dog skunked is WORSE than your child getting head lice)