Google Social Search to go live Monday

Google Social Search is ready to surface content created by your friends in regular search results pages.

(Credit: Google)

Google is ready to show off its concept for social search while it figures out what to do with Twitter's fire hose of data.

Last week at the Web 2.0 conference Google's Marissa Mayer demonstrated the service, which will go live as a Google Labs project on Monday. Google Social Search links the concepts of so-called "real-time" search with Google Profiles and custom search results, allowing searchers to find content created by friends or contacts with Google Profiles.

Google Social Search was developed separately without the Twitter deal in mind, said Amit Singal, a Google fellow. The opt-in service provides your Gmail contacts and friends on public social-networking services with the content you've linked to your Google Profile, such as blogs, Twitter or Friendfeed accounts, or any number of published material.

That means that if you've linked your personal blog to your Google Profile, your contacts will be able to see your blog posts related to a given query directly in their search results pages. Those links will be placed at the bottom of the search results page for now, and searchers will also have the option to refine the search results page with a new "social" link on the left-hand side of the page to focus just on content from your network.

Public social-networking content from friends of friends will also be available through this service, with a description of how that person's content is linked to your network appearing within the search result.

[Super2online]

Sounds like it might be useful, or not. But not having a Facebook deal appears to be a huge glaring problem with their strategy.

[t8]

It could also be a glaring problem for Facebook.

[LordOfMictlan]

I can't say this won't be more useful in the future, but for now it seems like a weak attempt to sidestep Facebook. It's weak because it relies on public content, and most people in a given social circle don't publish any public content. If you have 3 people in your circle who run blogs, occasionally update personal pages, or link forum participation to their Google ID, you might turn up an interesting social result here and there. Whereas with Facebook the circle cranks out significant amounts of desirable content daily.

[alansky]

What Google should really do with Twitter's "fire hose of data" is delete it immediately. The Twitter data stream is primarily useless rubbish. What a joke that anyone would consider it worthwhile to preserve this rapidly-mounting heap of garbage, much less make it searchable.

[iPhoneUser]

this is about as cool as the ZuneHD

[CCCCnetttt]

Wow, it must be really great then. I must hand it to Google for doing such a fine job. I love the Zune too!

[iPhoneUser]

this is about as cool as the ZuneHD

[AppleSuxLeo]

And in other Google-related news...

Droid ? the First Motorola Android-based Phone

Motorola will soon come with its first mobile device developed in partnership with Google to feature the next-generation open Android platform phone, named Droid. It is slightly thicker than the iPhone but has the thinnest touch QWERTY slider available on the market. It seems to be the fastest Android device and it?s no surprise because it has an ARM Cortex A8 TI OMAP3430 processor. The display, according to the FCC information, is a massive high 854×480 pixels resolution, which is 2-3 times the space as the Palm Pre, Android G1 or iPhone.

Motorola Droid is 3G-capable. Its industry-leading 3.7-inch display allows the best view of websites and easily zooms with a double tap for faster navigating. Due to its powerful processor, Flash and full HTML browser, Droid delivers Web pages, 3D graphics and videos up to two-times faster than other devices, in beautiful 16-million color high-definition.

Its 16:9 high-resolution screen frame is ideal for watching clips or downloaded videos, and playback and YouTube upload over 3G Wi-Fi can be watched at DVD quality video. A built-in 5 megapixel camera provided with dual LED flash has the quality of a dedicated digital camera with auto focus and zoom. Users can store up to 16GB of content or insert a memory card up to 32GB.

Motorola Droid sets new standards for smartphones. The power of Web search gets a new meaning. Motorola Droid allows you to type or speak your search with voice command, and you get results from the web, but also anything you want ? contacts, music, photos, applications and more. You don?t have to dig into menus anymore to find what you need; everything is available from the home screen.

Droid is for costumers looking for an ultimate web browsing experience.

Motorola Droid will be available on the 1st of December in North America, exclusively on Verizon Wireless.

[jsncafe]

I think this will be a richer search experience when searching for valuable product/service reviews, travel ideas and job opportunities.

I've posted an article on How To Get Started With Google Social Search here: http://javasocialnetworking.com/2009/10/getting-started-with-google-social-search/

Angela Denby
www.javasocialnetworking.com