I came across a new social search today which impressed me just a little. It needs to be investigated a little more but the concept; look and feel and the results were quite impressive.
The site, me.dium.com/search has a strange feel to it, probably because of the white and orange and not the traditional Google or Yahoo set up. The search results are also a little different. They are returned in three columns (you can change to two columns). However looks are one thing. Performance is another. It is slow but does return a lot of entries. On the down side, on some of the search terms I used, particularly entering domain names without the extensions, you get hundred or even thousands of results, most being sites that link in to that website rather than the website itself.
However, for a youngish site its overall performance wasn’t too bad – just don’t expect Google like results, in terms of look or results.
It is however a social search site more than, for example, a product search or information search site. me.dium.com itself is a cross between a search site and a social bookmarking site.
The main difference is that rather than bookmarking and referring to friends, you connect with friends and surf the net together sharing what you find along the way. It comes with it’s own toolbar.
I don’t know if I would use it although I can see its use when it comes to group projects. College kids may find a good use in that area. I certainly don’t need another tool bar cluttering up what is already cluttered.
It is an interesting concept and over time it may even win over a few people. However, in this crowded social environment, it may struggle to find a place. It is well worth checking out.
Check out kiobo.com – another site in a similar space, with a terrific UI. Kiobo even lets you see where your friends like to browse and what have they browsed recently – if your friends allow you to.
Thanks for writing a piece about our new search engine. There are a few things about our search that make it especially unique. Our search is crowd powered in that it returns results based on what people are surfing in real time. This engine is backed by the Yahoo! BOSS system so even if the social search isn’t giving you the results you like, Yahoo! will. To influence others search results is as easy as downloading one of our toolbars or social sidebar. The more people using the search engine, the better the results returned.
We are processing our user’s clickstream data in real-time to create a different lens based on what’s going on now. For example. if you did a search for John Edwards on Google or Live, and you get johnedwards.com and wiki/johnedwards. Do the same search on Me.dium and you learn that today people care about his love child, pictures of his mistress, etc.