Social Searching with Aardvark, a Free Large-Social Search Engine!

Just as the paper, “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, is the academic paper that help get Google going, the authors of “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine” (PDF) does the same thing for their service, Aardvark (aka “Vark”). The Google paper was presented at the WWW 1998 Conference while the Aardvark paper will be presented at WWW 2010 in Raleigh, NC.



From a Summary Blog Post:
The paper describes the fundamental differences between the traditional “Library” paradigm of web search — in which answers are found in existing online content — and the new “Village” paradigm of social search — in which answers arise in conversation with the people in your network. We explain that in social search:


+ Users can ask questions in natural language, not keywords

+ Content is generated “on-demand”, tapping the huge amount of information in peoples’ heads

+ The system is fueled by the goodwill of its users


We demonstrate that there is a large class of subjective questions — especially longer, contextualized requests for recommendations or advice — which are better served by social search than by web search. And our key finding is that whereas in the Library paradigm, users trust information depending upon the authority of its author, in the Village paradigm, trust comes from our sense of intimacy and connection with the person we are getting an answer from.


Want to Try Vark? Go For It and See How it Works for You
The service is free and online at http://vark.com/ . Of course, it’s usefulness has an info resource has a lot to do with the type of question, the question itself, and how the question is asked. Of course, these ideas are not new to information professionals.


You can read more about Aardvark via the NY Times @: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/a-search-engine-that-relies-on-humans/

Social Searching with Aardvark, a Free Large-Social Search Engine!