SocialRank for Social Search

I just wanted to let you all know about what we’ve been working on in the ol’ R&D department (aka: the living room). The first version of SideStripe that you are using now has focused mostly on getting the basics of a social search engine built:

• creating personalized search indexes for all our users based on people in their social network
• delivering social search results in places where they can be useful in your day to day lives without asking you to change (the SideStripe Google widget)

Social search, even in it’s most basic form, is a very complex problem to solve mostly due to the fact that everyone who searches gets different, personalized results. No two searches are the same.

Now it’s time to take SideStripe to the next level by ensuring that the social results appear in the most relevant order for every individual user. This is particularly helpful for our widget since we only show three results when you do a search on Google using our Google Widget, but also makes a huge difference when looking at the remainder of your social results. So, without further delay, we would like to introduce you to SocialRank.

SocialRank is SideStripes's proprietary algorithm for sorting social search results. In addition to keyword relevancy (like a traditional search engine), SocialRank takes into account several factors related to your social network. Unfortunately I can’t say what those are at this point, but we will definitely share how it works in the very near future. Stay tuned…

 

Facebook Search vs SideStripe Search

We’ve had a few meetings where we are showing our technology to people and once in a while someone inevitably says, “What about Facebook’s search? Doesn’t it do this?” And since we all know that a picture says a thousand words, and a live real-time demo says 10,000 words (you’ve heard that before right?), we pull up Facebook and SideStripe and do side by side searches. This blog shows that comparison.

Here is a search for “wine” on Facebook using our CEO’s (Matt Bradley’s) Facebook account. He doesn’t mind… honestly!

 

So let’s examine these results:

1. Chris Wine is a connected friend on Facebook. All good.
2. Cult Vines Wine and Classic Wines….??  What are these? Wine companies I guess. Matt can add them as friends if he wants. Now you might ask, “Can a human and a company be friends?”  Yes. This is the Internet where anything can happen.
3. Another guy from Knoxville with “wine” found somewhere in his long last name (Winebrenner). Matt and this guy have a mutual friend, but Matt has never heard of this guy.
4. The next two results are wine related groups, “A Glass of Wine Solves Everything” and “I love wine!”. And although it may be true that a glass of wine does solve everything, it may not be what Matt is looking for.

So are any of these results useful? The first one would be useful if Matt were searching for Chris Wine specifically, maybe to send him a message or to see what’s going on in his life. Or if he were looking to join a wine group, then he could find them here.

Now lets look at the same search on SideStripe:

1. Friends review of a wine bar in San Francisco called District.
2. Another friend took pictures of his trip to Niagara wine country.
3. A couple of friends who have said they are interested in wine on their social network profile.

Conclusion

Facebook search helps you find people and groups to connect to whereas SideStripe search helps you find information about the people you know. This post is not intended to say our search is better than Facebook’s, it just shows that they are much different and have a different purpose.

What do you think? Which results would you rather see? Which do you think are more relevant if you were searching?

We’re Connected! Facebook Connected That Is…

We just pushed out Facebook Connect support which means you can login with one simple click on one of the Facebook Connect buttons. Or if you are a new SideStripe user, it’s just as easy. Look for the Facebook Connect button on the SideStripe home page or the button at the top of every page that looks like this:

Try it out and let us know what you think.