SideStripe News

SocialRank for Social Search

2009-01-22T16:01:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-05T13:28:00.001-08:00

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:

Chris Wine is a connected friend on Facebook. All good.
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.
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.
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:

Friends review of a wine bar in San Francisco called District.
Another friend took pictures of his trip to Niagara wine country.
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…

2009-01-01T12:27:00.001-08:00

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.

SideStripe on TechCrunch

2008-12-28T21:40:00.001-08:00

I just opened TechCrunch and read an article by Erick Schonfeld called "The Future Of Social Search (Or Why Google Should Buy Facebook)" and was excited to see that SideStripe was the main attraction. The article had many comments that have topics including how social search might be important in the coming year. I would have to agree on this point. The opportunity to enhance search is long overdue, and we are very ready to help people socialize their search and improve the quality of Google's search results. We are very excited with the response so far and looking forward to responding to all the user feedback. We are also currently in the process of getting ready for a new release with new features so stay tuned...

New Site Design

2008-11-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

Very exciting news - we have updated our website with a new design. It has a cool new look and we think gets high marks for style points. It also gives some great examples that make it easy to understand how powerful SideStripe can be. We added some great content that describes about how to use SideStripe on Google and on Facebook. Check out the site here www.sidestripe.com

2-Click Sign Up Process

2008-11-14T17:08:00.001-08:00

We heard from many people that our sign-up process was long and confusing so I just wanted let everyone know about a much needed update that we just pushed out . We’ve simplified it all down to a couple of clicks, you just need to add the application to your social network then one more click after that to complete the setup.

In addition, your friends that are not on SideStripe can now answer your questions directly on Facebook without having to sign up for SideStripe. This makes SideStripe a more useful tool for you because you can get more answers, and a much nicer experience for your friends as well.

Here is a screenshot of a couple of questions in my Facebook feed:

And here is the screen where your friends can answer questions:

Let us know what you think of the new updates and remember the old saying, “a question a day keeps the doctor away”… errr, something like that anyways. So start asking questions and getting answers from the people you trust!

Social Networks and Search Engines

2008-10-13T16:18:00.001-07:00

There are great social networks and there are great search engines. I’m going to provide a little background on these two great technologies/services and explain how SideStripe came to be.

Social networks are those places where we spend a bit of time to keep in touch with our friends and get back in touch with our long lost friends. There are a ton of them out there, but Facebook and MySpace are the big players in the space with Facebook stealing the lead from MySpace this year. On social networks, we share things with our friends such as pictures we took on our last vacation and we what we are doing now. When you really dig into it, social networks are communication tools.

Search engines let us find information that is available on the Internet. Some do this better than others and usually “better” means that we find what we are looking for in the shortest amount of time (first page of results). Google became the dominant search engine because they figured out a “better” way to put the most relevant results at the top via their PageRank algorithm and until someone comes up with a “betterer” way than Google, they will remain the dominant search engine.

The idea for SideStripe came about from the following scenario that I’m sure you all can relate to: you search for something in your favorite search engine and after several searches, you just can’t find what you are looking for. So you call/text/IM/email a friend. For example, “general contractor san francisco”. You find some results, but you really don’t know who you can trust or anything about them, so the best thing to do is ask a friend who can recommend a contractor that they’ve had personal experience with. Or you search for “snowboarders” and you find the US Snowboarding Team, but what you really wanted to find is an activity partner and who better to be your activity partner than a friend. It was this common scenario that provided us with the "Aha!” moment and thus we conceived of SideStripe to solve this very problem.

We are live!

2008-09-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

The day has finally come. We have officially pushed the launch button and the product is now live. We have had a good response so far from the early Beta group, and we decided it was ready for the big time. We are excited about the response so far and are trying to track both the enthusiasm and the suggestions in order to create a better product. We have had a few bugs pop up, but we are working to fix them in real time to keep everyone happy, and although it is keeping us very busy, please keep the commentary coming. We will publish every comment on this site unless it is vulgar or inappropriate (those just go to close friends). Here’s a quick breakdown about where we’re at with SideStripe...

We have launched our V 1.0 version of the product. So far, we are trying to focus on giving our users a way to see search results from their friends while they are searching on Facebook or Google. The base results are coming from profile information, however, we have also made ways for people to enter in their own information, and create their own results that their friends can see when they search. For example, I can now add a review on Eagle Eye (I saw it last night). My review will be visible by everyone in my social network, and searchable when someone searches. Additionally, if I do a search for movies and cannot find the result that I am looking for, I can simply ask a question in my search that will go to my network. It is quite convenient. We have a number of other features that we are excited about and that we will be putting out soon, so make sure to stay tuned...

Thanks for your interest in SideStripe and keep the comments coming.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Have All Your Friends in your Back Pocket?

2008-09-26T11:38:00.001-07:00

Who do you ask when you’ve got questions like: Which laptop computer should I buy? White is better, the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3? Where’s a nice, romantic dinner spot to take my new date? Which hotel should I stay at in Cancun? What’s the best club in Vegas? Anybody have recommendations for a plumber? Which daycare do you take your kids to? Which doggy daycare? What movie should I see tonight?

Generally, we find answers to these questions by doing a search online or asking our friends and family. Searching is much easier with instant results and you don’t have to call or spam all your friends to get the answer. On the other hand, the answers that your friends and family would provide, would be much more valuable to you because you know and trust them and you can actually have a discussion about the question. They are not random people that posted something on the Internet.

Well what if we could get instant answers from our friends without having to spam our entire network? Imagine searching for “xbox vs playstation” and instantly seeing that your friend Jill has an Xbox 360 and loves it because of all the great Xbox Live features, and your other good friend Mark also has an Xbox 360 and likes it because because he can play Tiger Woods ‘08 with his friends from back home.

You’ve just imagined SideStripe.

Getting close to Launch!

2008-09-18T12:29:00.001-07:00

Well, we are getting very close to launch. I would say it is just a matter of days now. All of the parts of the app are working properly now, the website is almost ready, and we are testing as much as possible looking for bugs.

We have been trying some new designs for the UI, and are happy to have an old friend (Daniel) helping us out. It is great to get outside opinions, and our beta testers and board have been very helpful in giving us feedback.

Travis an I launched a product last year and so we have some experience with the whole "viral" (mmm, low budget) launch strategy. It will be cool to try out a more consumer/viral strategy.

The launch list seems endless, but we are making really good progress. I can't wait until we are all ready and can push the launch button.

We have a new home!

2008-09-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

We got a new office! Woohooo!!!!

We have just moved into the smallest office ever. To be more accurate, it is really more of a conference room, but that is OK because it is cheap. We are here, and that is what is important. It makes it easy to find each other. It is also a step up from Travis's apartment over in Emeryville (although I will certainly miss the taco truck).

If it is true that great things can come from humble beginnings than I think we must be destined for complete world domination.

Ahh but there is more - check out this one of our CEO (below). He is high spirited but very demanding. Hail the Chief!

Welcome

2008-09-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, and thank you for visiting our blog. Perhaps it would help to give you some background and bring you up to speed on how we got here, and where we are going.

One afternoon, while I was searching Google to find the latest about the new iPhone (which I was considering buying), I found that I was running into a little problem. While I was getting plenty of information from many sources in my search, I kept asking myself "who are these people reviewing and giving me information? Was it someone that used to play Castle Wolfenstien (yes, I played it) on their Apple II in 1980 and has a special shrine to Steve Jobs?? Perhaps it was someone that Steve fired, who has a personal vendetta and a voodoo doll that they stab with pins when they get mad? I had no idea who any of the people were that were my information sources, and it left me still searching for a more reliable resource.

My first thought? I will call Travis. Travis is my friend, and likely the best technical resource on the planet. He knows basically everything about technology, and could give me a personal (and accurate) review on the iPhone while simultaneously coding and drinking very strong coffee. He gave me the information that I needed, and then I hung up to go to the Apple store. As I was driving to the store, I realized how much easier it would be if there had been a way for me to get the information from Travis without having to call him. If there was just a way to take all that information from everyone that I know and use it to solve problems, make decisions, or just to make me laugh, then life would be much easier. And thus, an idea was born.

We want to give you an internet experience that makes you wonder how you ever used to get along without us. We want to make every site on the Internet a social experience. We want to arm you with the power of all your friends. They will be with you wherever you go, providing useful information or answers to questions that you can depend on.

Welcome to sidestripe.