Google mashup - only with google sources?
Today I’ve been asking people about my idea for a search mashup that can be more valuable than Google. Can it really be true, why do I even dare to be so bold? Some considerations:
- The amount of popular Web 2.0 frameworks are growing continuously - people like online tools for certain reasons. Google doesn’t know what your favorite Web 2.0 tools are, or else Google might provide a more personalized ranking?
- It takes time to keep track of all interesting changes in all those frameworks, personally I like Google, Delicious, Slideshare, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin. And I just know that I should spend more time on LastFM or Flixter, but I just don’t have time to really check all the cool things that are available. So can a mashup save me time and allow me to see more interesting content at the same time?
- It would be even more interesting if I can mix it with my favorite websites, even if they are behind a login. Can I have a search through our wiki / jira in the same mashup?
- Can the search be more smart and allow me to organize my interests into ‘parts of life’ like work, research, travel, sport, family, friends, movies …?
- And can the search be so smart to also move along with me through time - during the week or weekends - morning, afternoon, evening, night?
- Can the search already get me started with the preferences that I have available in facebook, lastfm, delicious, wordpress or tripadvisory?
Google is so good nowadays, we don't need the Top 10 anymore - the first 2-3 are enough
The picture above compares how people click on Google - 2005 and 2008. It shows that we now trust the first 2-3 results and we don’t need the Top 10 anymore. With mashups you can have the first 2-5 results of all your favorite Web 2.0 frameworks.
A basic ‘Your search’ mashup
I think we can make a first start from the MarCom mashup to a basic ‘Your search’ mashup with the following features:
- first ask me to identify with either my Facebook, Gmail or Hyves account
- it should use the same panels like the MarCom mashup (twitter, delicious, youtube, slideshare, amazon, google search, google search - favorite website)
- the panels now listen to a ’search keyword input’ or a ’search cloud’ panel instead of a pre-configured tagcloud panel
- if the user has identified with the Facebook or Hyves account, then use the relevant interests metadata from Facebook or Hyves to generate a starting search cloud
- the search cloud will remember new search key words that are used
- the search cloud will only show 30 most often used keywords - if there are more - the ones that are least used will not be shown
- the keywords and related counts are not thrown away, they’re just not shown in the search cloud
- the search cloud should offer a possibility to show all tags with a link ’show all tags’
- a user should be able to save a search cloud with different names (eg work, private, travel, sport, cars, etc.), a max of 25 search clouds should be sufficient I think
- a user should be able to ‘hide’ tags that are not relevant and save the tag cloud under different name
- so actually there is actually 1 big list of search keywords for each user
- but through different ‘names’ the user can chose to organize different views of the search clouds
The search mashup app would be cooler if
- if the panels could be rearranged in size / length
- the layout would be a ‘click, drag & drop’ to allow users to define their own mashup combination to show results
- for each view of the search cloud a different organization of the mashup can be remembered (used panels, position, sizes, lengths)
- if a user can also import tags from:
- LastFM (favorite artists)
- Delicious
- Google bookmarks
- Wordpress (used tags)
- If the searchcloud could use variation in density of colors to show how ‘recently’ the search keyword has been used
- a dense but small keyword means a new interest, but recently often searched
- a light but small keyword means that it’s been a big interest in the past
- If the searchcloud could somehow show directly how many results are found in each seracheable Web 2.0 frameworks before I click on it
- this can be cached every hour?
If we do it for ourselves … then we can believe it’s also cool for others
Personally I know that I’m a reasonable Web 2.0 poweruser and with me I know that Componence team members are above average Web 2.0 users. But statistics show that there are millions more out there that use different combinations of Web 2.0 tools. But they probably all have the same isse, they want to know / see more - but have less and less time to browse the internet. So if the mashup we make is really usefull for us and we really see advantages of it above Google search, then it will be time for us to launch the app into Facebook to see how many more user internationally will find the app usefull.
