Running Searchles around Google?

Searchles (pronounced circles) is an interesting concept.  I think I have seen similar things in the past couple of months along these same lines from everyone but Google.  Where are you Google?  Maybe they have something in the works.  I must confess I haven’t checked out the Labs page in a while.  Feel free to enlighten me.  This is actually really nifty stuff.

I like Searchles primarily for its promise to deliver a social media generated content index.  It’s not perfect yet, but then again Google wasn’t perfect on day one either.  Remember back that far? 

Here is what I like.  I have embraced social networks as my preferred method of gathering information.  I even contribute in my own small ways from time to time.  Social networks form what I call my “human powered search engine”.

Here is a comprehensive list of features you will find at Searchles.com:

- Automatic integration of YouTube and Google Videos
- Personal Flash tag clouds you can install on your MySpace page
- Create groups on any topic to share URL’s with like minded people
- Discuss URL’s with friends
- Save URL’s to Searchles that are accessible from anywhere
- Tag URL’s for easy recall
- Searchles automatically downloads documents and indexes them for maximum searchiness
- Connect with your friends and URL’s will be automatically shared

By the way, if you haven’t seen Dumbfind it is by the same folks.  Check them out and let me know your thoughts. 

Did you see the new Netscape Beta yet?  It looks promising too.

-- David

Comments

[Joe Beaulaurier]

FYI: Yahoo!'s Video Gallery includes the videos Yahoo! hosts as well as others available all over the web (e.g. Google, YouTube, ABC, etc.).

And from your description (no I haven't made the effort to follow the link), it sounds like Searchles has all the social bookmarking elements of de.licio.us or MYWeb from Yahoo!.

It's a shame Yahoo! has fallen out of fashion these days. In the past year the stuff they have rolled out (w/o much media attention) is simply spot-on with most everyone's social networking needs.

[liona]

I have been a heavy user of searchles. My understanding is Searchles include advanced algorithms measuring actual popularity rather than the simulated popularity algorithm popularized by Google PageRank. For example, a popular site like Yahoo provides links to sites all over the web. But when Yahoo provides a link to another website, Google's PageRank calculates that link as very relevant too. As we all know, that doesn't necessarily mean that Internet surfers agree. Searchles' algorithms calculate actual popularity based on how people connect to each other and how many people bookmark a certain site, returning results that provide a more accurate measure of relevancy.