Extending On-line Social Communities into Pure Search
Extending On-line Social Communities into Pure Search is the panel I'll be moderating next Friday the 5th at 7pm in Louisville, KY.

Attendees include:
Steve Mansfield - PreFound
Mena Trott - Six Apart (Live Journal)
Ben Trott - Six Apart (Live Journal)
Garrett French - Search Engine Lowdown
Bambi Francisco - Search and Social Network Media
Jessica E. Vascellaro - Wall Street Journal
Olga Kharif - Business Week

Steve (check out the PreFound blog) frames it as "a discussion about harnessing the power of these millions of online social community users into developing Search related content that is provided, organized and presented by the members of the community."

I will try very hard to keep us focused on just search... I've been getting pretty excited about the blog/map/news/local/(maybe soon to be) networking site ReadExpress lately ;)

This weekend I'll be digging down deeper into social networking and social search so that I can help to answer the question Steve asks: "is it inevitable that these huge networks of online communities evolve into controlling search on significant levels?"

The first place I'll start is how networks of online communities ALREADY control search on significant levels through linkage data. (Steve would argue - I think - that SEM link-building efforts render this data useless. I would argue that they could eventually.)

That said, I am VERY excited about digging down - with Live Journal and PreFound data - into social networks and their potential for driving search relevance. Because I think the possibilities are huge, and money follows relevance.

I recently moderated a social blogging presentation here in Raleigh and a mentor gave me some great advice yesterday for moderating Extending On-line Social Communities into Pure Search :)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |