Archive for November, 2007

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and it is now that time of year for revelry and cheer! Celebrated in the United States, the day exists to commemorate the Pilgrims coming ashore at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. If you’re curious to find out more about the ‘Origins of the Holiday’ and its ‘Traditions and Legends,’ visit our Gallery™ on Thanksgiving.

Staff bloggers over at PC World are reporting how you can already get a head start on all of that post-Thanksgiving shopping splendor, known as “Black Friday”: sites like TGIBlackFriday.com and Black Friday 2007 show you just how to prepare for this wonderful holiday experience, with updates on sales, stores, and brands (oh my!).

Here at hakia.com, we want to wish you the very best as the holidays get underway, and we hope you find all of the meaning you are searching for this season.

As we always say, we love feedback and our ear is on the ground listening to hakia. We would like to share the survey results of 1579 respondents who chose to submit their anonymous feedback as of November 5, 2007 by clicking on the feedback link at the hakia search results’ page.

This survey marks a historic event, a semantic Web search technology has been tested by the public for the first time. The results are encouraging. We have found out that:

- In the long run, semantic search can carve out a significant market share
- There is frustration amongst users of search
- Even in BETA, hakia.com is showing overall favorable performance

The numbers shown below tell us that 64% of the users, who participated in the survey voluntarily, recognized the value offered by hakia.com (the first question), 74% will be using hakia.com at different frequencies (the second question), and 58% is willing to recommend hakia.com to others (the last last question).

Note that the “urge to participate” to the survey among the positive thinkers versus negative thinkers is an unknown factor, thus the survey results are not a direct measurement of the potential hakia market share. However, the results clearly show the value recognized by our users as it is reconfirmed by hakia’s steady traffic growth since the beginning of its BETA operation.

The Web users seem to be ready to add a new semantic search engine to their bookmarks. Now, semantic technologies have to rise up to this call and deliver the technology. At hakia.com, our goal is finish the product development and service offerings by the first half of 2008. Stay tuned!

Now that searchers have the choice with hakia.com’s introduction of its new service, MEET OTHERS who asked the same query, we will find out. Users will tell us by either using the service or not. So far, it seems that they are finding value because our rooms are building.

The BETA launch of MEET OTHERS raised the question Is it a good idea to combine search engine with social networking? We listened to reactions and comments in the blogosphere before sharing our views and the story behind MEET OTHERS with you.

Our Internet consumption patterns are rapidly changing. Mary Meeker presented the slide below at the Web 2.0. Summit last month (you can download her presentation here) which demonstrates how quickly we have embraced social networking. The bolded text show the winners and losers. That said, today’s social networking applications primarily focus on keeping the friends or contacts we already have organized in one place so that we can better leverage our networks. Google’s OpenSocial initiative is a step toward giving users more flexibility to port their contacts and to do the things they want to do now.

We think social networking is just getting started. Users have embraced virtual hand shakes and second lives. Couple this obversation with the fact that search is still the second most engaged in activity by Internet users after email. Conclusion: search engines should offer users a chanel to make NEW friends or NEW connections around search queries with minimal effort and no sign-ups.

We designed MEET OTHERS to connect searchers to NEW friends or business partners. Consider it social networking with the universe around you. Someone using hakia.com is already in search mode looking for information or someone to contact or to transact. Some of these exchanges are more valuable through peer-to-peer transactions. You may be looking for stories of others who are suffering from the same health problem. Or you may be looking for a sold-out concert’s tickets you can buy from someone who wants to sell his or hers before you try your chances at the door.

The Internet gives you freedom to do what you want when you want. OpenSocial is a step toward serving this demand, mostly by helping users port existing social graphs. MEET OTHERS pushes the envelope even further by providing users the freedom to meet others and make NEW friends or connections at the moment of Web search.

You are free to choose search as a channel for social networking for the first time. Try MEET OTHERS and tell us what you think!

We have just launched a new service that combines a search engine with a social networking platform. The idea can be summarized as shown below.

The power of “the same query” is unquestionable. It puts together relevant Web pages in a search engine. It can put together relevant people in the same manner. Both results are highly interrelated. hakia’s new service offers a single click integration or switch between these two search platforms.

Another perspective is that the content presented on the left (search engine) comes from Web pages with editorial control whereas the content presented on the right (social networking) is like free speech, comprised of peoples’ opinion and desires. Together, they complete the “search” picture one more degree.

hakia’s MEET OTHERS service sits on the same semantic search platform as the hakia.com search engine, which are both in the BETA mode. We will talk about these capabilities in our future blog posts. The ongoing progress of the semantic capabilities will enhance both operations.

How does it work? It is explained in a flash presentation. Or you can go to hakia.com, enter a query, and follow the MEET OTHERS link.

MEET OTHERS service is also an excellent tool for Web authors who can link phrases and questions directly to conversation rooms. For example, Is it a good idea to combine search engine with social networking? is a direct link for people to discuss and contact each other via peer-to-peer communication features.

Note that the conventional networking environments force the user to go into predesigned rooms. hakia’s MEET OTHER service offers the freedom of creating a room of any detail and specifity.

Last point. No registration is required to view the rooms and post messages. We only require authentication via email confirmation. Stay tuned for more information..