Yahoo has a beta “Social Search Engine” called (woo!) My Web 2.0. According to the Yahoo Search Blog, it “enables people to search the expertise of their friends and community”. It hooks into Yahoo 360 (which opened up to the general public last week), and it’s got “personalized search”, sharing controls, tagging and APIs. All beautiful Web 2.0 stuff – and I presume that’s why “Web 2.0” features in the name. Oh and they have a blog too.
Reactions from around the ‘Sphere (including those who got to test drive it before the public announcement):
Flickr Blog: “…it has all the ingredients for a healthy Web 2.0 experience, including:
ï Control what you see (and want to see) by your social network
ï Open APIs for developers to mess with
ï RSS feeds for pulling out the stuff you’re interested in
And of course:
ï You can tag more than a kid with ADD on a third grade playground (including
location, time and people tagging)”
Jeremy Zawodny: “…for most topics I might want to know more about, I already know someone that’s smarter than me on the subject. I have my very own community of experts (we all do).”
Waxy.org: “At the very least, it blows Google’s offering out of the water, and follows in a recent trend of Yahoo’s smart moves and acquisitions.”
(plus some interesting thoughts on how it compares to del.icio.us)
Matt Haughey on the difference between My Web 2.0 and delicious: “I use delicious to bookmark all the neat things I find online, but Yahoo’s search is more for reference things and epinions style bookmarks I want to save for later and share with friends.”
Marc Canter: “But to make this really functional I’m hoping that access to members themselves and what they’ve rated, ranked, tagged, etc. – will also be necessary.”
Ross Mayfield: “When you make search social, what matters is trust, expertise and context.”
John Battelle: “This is a major push from Yahoo in the realm of social search.”
SiliconBeat: “Version one was mostly about storing bookmarks and whatnot. Version 2.0 is about sharing that information with others.”
Greg Linden is skeptical: “Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 might win some converts in the early adopter crowd, but it isn’t a system built for the mainstream.”
Related:
Google launches Personalized Search. Google Blog states “…you can use that search history you’ve been building to get better results.”
(nb: you know it’s the official Google blog, because it calls Sergey and Larry by their first names)
But wait, there’s more:
Yahoo! are upgrading their email software to incorporate Oddpost functionality (one of Yahoo’s acquisitions last year).
I guess this is going to be Yahoo’s week, just as last week was Microsoft’s. Poor old Google 🙂
