Your Own Personal Recommendation Assistant
Social search is in. Traditional search is out. Social search is about recommendations and trusted people. Traditional search is about algorithms and PhDs.
While almost 100% of my search used to be done first on AltaVista, then AOL and then Google, over the past year this % has shrunk to perhaps 20%. Most of what I am looking for today comes from my blogcatalog friends, posts on their blogs, and via twitter tweets. Is this trend true for you too?
If true, then the key to finding what you like on the social web is first to know who to follow and second how to access their recommendations without having to search around their blogs and myriad social network profiles.
Twitter is one solution. Though, when it comes to a recommendation engine, it is incomplete. It enables you to quickly keep up with what people you are following are doing. Their tweets, provide you with quick glimpses into their life. Twitter is more like cocaine as it comes in short bursts, and often times leaves one hungry for more; perhaps Ive used the wrong drug in this analogy.
Various sites, including blogcatalog, have created lifestreaming apps, where you can track what your friends are doing on all the social networks they belong to. This is cool but you still have to visit your friend’s personal profiles to see what they are liking on the web.
BlogCatalog’s News Feed widget (was installed in sidebar..though lost in the tumblr somehow) shows what your friends are doing on the social networks they belong to without you having to visit all the sites they belong to
The News Feed Widget fits into Social Recommendation model perfectly. Your readers/followers want your recommendations. Sometimes they read your blog posts, other times they see your blog favorites and blogroll, they may be notified via twitter or visit your digg page. What they really want though is a quick way to find out what you like.By having the News Feed widget in my sidebar I am able to give anyone who wants to know what Im doing with Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, New Posts I have added on all my blogs and other social networks, a quick and easy way to see what I’m “recommending”.
The News Feed at its core is a Personal Recommendation engine. It automatically broadcasts each of your daily recommendations to your blog readers without you having to do any additional work.
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