Social Search

One of the interesting questions hanging around the social software/media world is when and how (even if) businesses (especially large ones) are going to embrace these new technologies. In the past, I've done research on business adoption of social media and discussed it among past podcasts (Ynema Mangum of BMC is a notable one) but my next interviewee provides a whole new level of insight.

As the amount of information on- and off-line continues to explode, we'll need new and better tools to discover, organize and process all the content. Browser-based bookmarking has given way to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. But social bookmarking can still be improved as shown by Clipmarks, the subject of my next podcast interview.

Right now, I'm fascinated by the "social search" trend. For interview #78, I tracked down an entrepreneur with an interesting approach to harnessing the human element in search, Amanuel Tewolde of Otavo.

Otavo is a social search engine where users tap the community to help them with their quest for information online. Perhaps the best way to describe it is as collaborative web searching. Pretty cool.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a huge trend. From email to accounting to windows to CRM, everyone is jumping on board.

Stan James is out to change the world and he might just have an idea that could do it.

I could try and explain it to you but the Outfoxed website does it better than I ever could. (The service has been re-branded Lijit)

Or you could just listen to the podcast:

Social Commerce a much discussed topic these days. For podcast #50, I found an entrepreneur with his sights directly set on that opportunity.

In my last post I said I wasn't going to do any more podcasts until next week but, thanks to a truly bizarre series of events that kept me in Stockholm on Saturday, I managed to connect with Kevin Burton of Tailrank for my 40th podcast.

Tailrank is a leading memetracker for the blogosphere and Kevin is the entrepreneur behind it. Via satellite hookup from Thailand, Kevin and I chatted about how Tailrank works, how to "market" to it, the future of feeds and more.

Garrett French of MarketSmart Interactive and Search Engine Lowdown was my 36th interview. Garrett writes some really interesting articles about search and he knows how to pitch a podcaster.

He and I started out chatting about social search but got sidetracked and spent the majority of the podcast delving into the increasing muddiness of online applications and the resulting issues.

Check it out!