I spoke on a panel for Social Search yesterday, representing Wikia Search. More info.

I enjoyed having an audience for Wikia Search to be demonstrated and displayed, particularly this audience — which I would consider the upper echelon of technology in Silicon Valley. I met a few intelligent people, and saw some familiar faces from Yahoo!. Overall I think it went well. I wasn’t aggressive enough about butting in; I didn’t speak much, but when I did, I think it made sense. DJcline.com covered the event and is going to be doing a write up in a few days, so we should see pictures and videos up there soon, I’ll update with a link when it is available.

Update: Here it is from Jason’s Ustream:

Broadcast by Ustream.TV

There was a big focus on monetization/advertising, which I found odd for a search technology conference. Perhaps a sign of what people are worried about? Reminds me of the big focus on monetization we saw right before the Web 1.0 bubble busted. Anyone remember the "B2B" craze when "B2C" fizzled? The cycle goes innovation->consolidation->innovation->consolidation->… I think we are entering a second round of consolidation. Time to buckle down?

It became obvious that the definition of "Social Search" was unclear. The panel was clearly bifurcated (as one audience member eloquently put it). With Facebook and Friendfeed (finding people) on one side, and then Wikia and Mahalo (community/people powered search), there were two camps, and neither one was truly "Social Search".

When this audience was thinking about Social Search, I think they were expecting for search results to be filtered based on what people similar to them were interested in. That sounds crazy to me. If I want my friends opinion on a local restaurant, I’ll just ask them. I don’t want a search engine to only search through my friends comments. No offense to my friends — but I want their input *and* everyone elses.

I think the valley is still trying to figure out what Social Search really is. It’s probably better to label Wikia as "Community Powered Search" than a "Social Search". We are focused on improving algorithmic search results with people’s input. Same for Mahalo, who was also on the panel (represented by their CEO, Jason Calacanis). I think Mahalo is the closest thing Wikia Search has to a competitor right now. They have a hybrid Wikipedia/Google approach, with paid editors.

I think the folks in the audience were entertained, engaged, and learned some stuff, but at least a few came expecting something different than what the panel had to offer.

Jason from Mahalo lived up to his reputation. He led out the panel publicly bashing Jimmy Wales based on personal issues, and it was up to me retort. I took a deep breath, rose above, and focused on what the crowd came to listen to — search and technology — not Ego battling. He stopped with the insults and we got down to business, but kept up the cynicism/aggression, at one point telling Facebook that they will never be able to monetize their traffic through advertising. Audacious!

I sympathize with him — he must spend a lot of effort and energy justifying to himself and/or investors why Mahalo his better than Wikia Search. Wikia Search must be viewed as a big threat, so his insecurity manifests itself in odd ways. I’m told that he has a past reputation for his attitude and this is "just how he is, it’s not personal". Best of luck to him with this approach. Sometimes I wish I was more bold, brash, and outspoken. It might be a good way to get attention; and it certainly made the panel more lively. ;-) Jason — thank you for providing the entertainment.

It was fun. It was good for me to be in the hot seat, and the preparation I went through ahead of time did help focus me and think through a lot of challenges that lay before us at Wikia, including:

  1. Spam control
  2. Reputation/Quality of ratings
  3. Openness and transparency

Special thanks to Robert and Safa Rashtchy for putting the event together, it was a blast.