Yahoo's Social Circle

(page 2 of 2)

But that could involve more time-consuming online activities, from simple bookmarking to labeling and reviewing Web sites. It's not clear users will make that kind of investment.

Others doubt the wisdom of crowds will offer much of an upgrade over the feats of raw computing power. "It really adds very little value to what is available now," says Raul Valdes-Perez, CEO of Vivisimo, which provides search technology to enterprises. "The best description of a document is the document itself."

MORE PLAYERS.

Google, by most appearances, is also tepid on the prospects of social search. Sure, the search giant has developed and acquired social-networking sites, such as Orkut and Dodgeball. But it has done far less than Yahoo in the arena of online community building. Analysts take that to mean Google's long-term bet remains on personalization -- using its mammoth computing horsepower to sort through data and better discern what users are thinking. Google declined to comment.

Yahoo didn't invent social search. The idea of tapping the collective wisdom of communities has floated around academia for years. Startup Eurekster hit the market first with its social search technology in early 2004. Since then, several other upstarts have jumped in with different twists on the general concept, including Jeteye Technologies and Kaboodle.

But Yahoo represents its greatest opportunity for traction, due to its hefty $4 billion war chest and 200 million active registered users. If Yahoo can begin to entice its legions of visitors to try some of its community offerings, be it sharing photos on Flickr or listing favorite blogs via blo.gs, it can begin to apply social search on a wider scale.

LONG WAY TO GO.

Currently, Yahoo is applying social search on a limited basis in its My Web 2.0 beta product. Users can save pages, as well as "tag" particular sites with descriptors such as "funny" or "research." These bookmarks and tags can be shared with others within a network of friends and contacts. Yahoo won't disclose the number of people using the service, but the site says that there have been 614,000 pages saved and 141,000 tags authored.

As with all community sites, the benefits grow with the size and activity of the group. That means Yahoo's social-search trial, still in its infancy, could take months or years before reaching its potential. "Social search is not one of these things that will take off overnight," says Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. "It will take a lot of time to build."

Although far from a slam dunk, it appears a technology gamble worth the wait. Meantime, Yahoo -- with its unique vision for the future of search -- can at least relish the chance to emerge from Google's shadow.

Elgin is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau .