Wajam, a social search extension for browsers, has just added Wajam Videos, which shows you what videos your friends have recommended through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Wajam also added social search to YouTube, enabling users to see what videos their friends are sharing. Now if you’re searching for a keyword like “Christmas” on Google, Yahoo or Bing, you’ll also be able to see what your friends have recommended.
While the blog post does not mention this, you can also search for videos shared to Facebook through Wajam Videos. This new product begs the question: Will search and social ever truly become intertwined?
Here’s what Wajam’s video search looks like:
Now try searching on Facebook and filtering the results to “posts by friends.” That’s about as close as you’ll get to finding videos about a specific topic.
Can Social Search Work?
Speaking of social search, Bing’s didn’t quite work out even though it included Facebook social integration. Apparently people are less interested in searching specifically for what their friends are doing, watching or buying.
On Facebook, content surfaces through the news feed. In its current iteration, users can sort by highlighted stories first or recent stories first. The news ticker steadily scrolls, bringing up new stories every few seconds.
Facebook is organized not around social search, but around popular content and real-time updates. Facebook Lists also gives users the opportunity to search by group.
While there is a way to search for a keywords specifically in posts by friends, it’s not an oft-used technique.
