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October 29, 2008

Ted Tjaden

Spokeo and me.dium – Two New "Social Network" Search Engines

A thanks to colleague Brenda Wong for letting me know of two new "social network" search engines mentioned at a recent SLA event she attended. I was not aware of either. They are: Spokeo and me.dium.

However, maybe I am getting too old. Both seem geared towards the "younger crowd", at least based on their own descriptions of their products but the first may help with due diligence type of investigations and the second appears to be taking advantage of the "wisdom of the crowd" philosophy.

Spokeo, for example, features a picture of teenage girls whispering in each other's ears with this tagline: "Want to see something juicy? Spokeo searches deep within 41 major social networks to find truly mouth-watering news about friends and coworkers." Not for me but perhaps for others.

Me.dium describes itself in these terms:

Me.dium’s Social Search enables our users to find relevant information based on the current surfing activity of other people. In other words, your search results are heavily influenced by what people are actually looking at online right now. This means we tend to surface news, reviews, pictures and videos that are hot, right now, according to crowds of people just like you. And as the activity of the crowds change, as the zeitgeist of the online community shifts, so do Me.dium’s search results. With Me.dium, you’ll always get a real view into what matters to the crowds right now.

I have not tried either product; one of them requires you to download and install a toolbar.

Brenda also mentioned there was discussion of Wikia Search, a search engine mentioned earlier this year on SLAW. This one to me seems more interesting and produces some interesting results with the ability for users to add to search results or improve existing search results.

Ted Tjaden has been a lawyer for over 20 years during which time he also obtained his Master of Information and Master of Laws degree from the University of Toronto. He is currently immersed in various Knowledge Management projects.
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One Comment on “Spokeo and me.dium – Two New "Social Network" Search Engines”

  1. Jenniferlauren says:
    October 30, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Hi, I'm Jen part of the team at Me.dium. Thanks for mentioning us in your write-up. While traditional search can provide some good results, we believe that the wisdom of the crowds should also play a role in determining what websites are returned. By using one of our add-ons or toolbars, you are able to help determine our search results, however if you don't want to contribute, you can absolutely still use Me.dium.com/search without downloading anything.

    I would love to get your feedback on http://Me.dium.com/search . Thanks again for the write up!

    Jenniferlauren
    Jboyle@me.dium.com

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