delver

Yahoo signs up BOSS search partner: Delver

Delver, a search start-up that personalizes search results by paying attention to a person's social connections, has signed up for Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service).

BOSS lets larger search sites use Yahoo's search results, tailored in any way desired but stripped of any Yahoo branding, in exchange for showing Yahoo ads or sharing revenue. Delver plans to mix those results in with its own technology, which shows results drawn from publicly visible parts of social sites such as profiles, blogs, bookmarks, and videos. Smaller sites and academic projects can use BOSS for free.

"Leveraging … Read more

Delver launches open alpha of its social search engine

One of my favorite companies from the January, 2008 Demo conference was Delver, a search engine that takes into consideration who your friends are and what they've said and bookmarked in its results. I liked the idea in January (see Damn clever: Delver makes search social) and I like it still--I've brought it up in several posts since then.

I finally got a chance to try it out, as you can today, now that the site has gone into open alpha testing. At the current time, it's cooler in theory than in practice, but there is a … Read more

Implicit social networks: Redux, Delver, YouChoose

The social network companies just left the stage at Demo 2008. Looking for inspiration from the group, I got this: The future of social networking will belong to companies that leverage the implicit, or derived, "social graph." I do not think that companies that are trying to create new online communities (from the Demo companies: iLeonardo, HubDub, AtlasPost) will own the future.

However, companies that divine the social network from what is already online are on to something. In that group there's Delver, which I reviewed last night, and these two interesting companies from the Demo session … Read more

Damn clever: Delver makes search social

This is one of the most innovative ideas at Demo 2008: Delver, a search engine that displays results for you based on what your friends and contacts are doing online. First, you tell it your name, and it scans the usual social networks to find out who your friends are. At this early stage of development, it scans LinkedIn, MySpace, Hi5, and Flickr, but Facebook and Twitter will be added.

Once Delver discovers who you know (and also who's in your extended circle--your friends of friends), it uses that data to return search results. For example, if you're … Read more