One of my favorite companies from the January, 2008 Demo conference was Delver, a search engine that takes into consideration who your friends are and what they've said and bookmarked in its results. I liked the idea in January (see Damn clever: Delver makes search social) and I like it still--I've brought it up in several posts since then."
But by Google’s own standards, social search engine Delver should be pretty high on the list of companies to watch."
The objective behind Delver is to uncover and make accessible knowledge and information that is hidden in users’ social graphs—an area that Google’s Marissa Mayer has indicated to be an essential part of Google’s future search offerings."
With the new social search service from Delver, however, you can leverage your social graph to find just the information you're looking for from the people you admire and/or trust and that makes finding content a much more personal experience.
Delver is still at a very early age of development, but even so, the service demonstrates a lot of potential to become the next step in the social web's evolution."
Delver is great for having a searchable archived look at the content your friends are sharing across various communities online. What it means is that you don’t have to keep a watchful eye on your friends’ feeds on Facebook or even FriendFeed–that stuff gets lost in the crowd very quickly if you’re too slow."
I've played with Delver today, which has a slightly different concept of search. It's based around social search, and it's really quite impressive. The idea is obvious - you'll like what your friends like (which may or may not be true) and so you will get more from searching if you can see what they're talking about - which of course only works if they are talking about stuff."
Delver saves you from having to delve too deeply if you just want a way into social networks without having to sign up for each: It lets you search the personal information, posts, and media people have put online in all of these ever more numerous outlets."
I do think Delver is worth watching, because it might show us the way to a new level of search relevance through its interesting implementation of social search."
San Francisco, CA—July 15, 2008 - Delver.com today unveiled an alpha version of the first true social search engine. Delver maps a user’s social connections then delivers comprehensive Web search results ranked according to their social relevance to that user.
Delver, based on the user’s search query, organizes and ranks publicly displayed content, found on social networking profiles, web sites, blogs, bookmarks, and photo and video sharing sites from the user’s online social network. A ‘breadcrumb’ is shown next to each result, showing how that result is related to the user, thus qualifying its relevance.
“Delver is designed to ‘delve’ into your online social graph to generate search results gathered from your friends, your network and your friends’ networks, to help you find information more relevant to you as an individual,” said Liad Agmon, CEO of Delver. “We prioritize results based on your network to make Web search more fun and meaningful, while enabling you to discover others in your extended network who share common interests.”
Delver also gives users the ability to tap into the content and network of people whose opinion they value by adding them as ‘Search Buddies’. Delver prioritizes results from ‘Search Buddies’ and their network as if they were the users’ friends. Furthermore, Delver provides a number of features for organizing and retaining the information found as a result of a search query. When results are yielded, user’s may choose the “keep it” option, which stores the selected links in the appropriate categories for compiling lists or easier reference later on.
Though Delver.com is in an early stage of product development, it demonstrates the great potential and necessity of social search. Delver currently covers Myspace, Blogger, Flickr, LinkedIn, Youtube, Hi5, FriendFeed, Digg and Delicious; other sources, such as Facebook and the top blogging platforms will be added to the service over the next few months.
Delver is simultaneously launching a partner program whereby sites hosting or containing user generated content can easily integrate Delver search technology to greatly improve their users experiences on the site while also increasing monetization from sponsored search results.
First announced at DEMO 08 in February, Delver is the first social search company that improves the relevancy of Web search results by prioritizing these results based upon the searcher’s social network. The company’s patent-pending technology maps users’ social connections and delivers web search results ranked according to their social relevance to the users. Delver is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel and will open U.S. offices in Silicon Valley in summer 2008. Delver is backed by Carmel Ventures, a top-tier Israel-based VC. For more information, visit www.delver.com.
Palm Desert, CA—January 28, 2008—Delver (formerly Semingo) will present its soon-to-launch socially connected search engine at DEMO 08 in Palm Desert, California, on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 3pm PST. Delver is the first company to map a user’s social connections and deliver comprehensive Web search results ranked according to their social relevance to that user.
“People want trusted information from their friends, but may not know who in their network is knowledgeable about a given topic,” said Liad Agmon, CEO of Delver. “We make Web search more fun and meaningful by prioritizing results based on a user’s network, while enabling the user to discover others in their extended network who share common interests.”
Delver makes search more significant to the user by organizing friends’ tags and information found on social networking profiles, blogs, bookmarks, photo and video sharing sites; unlike older-generation Web search engines which prioritize the Web based upon the popularity of a given page or Web site. Then, the Delver search engine ranks this information based upon the searcher’s social connections. Since every person’s social graph is unique -- like a fingerprint -- the same query garners vastly different results for each person and reflects the collective experiences of a user’s trusted contacts.
“Delver’s social search functionality has the potential to redefine the way people search for uniquely relevant information on the Web,” said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the semi annual DEMO Conferences.
Since the user’s social connections impact the type of information a Delver search will yield, each user’s results will be different. For example, if a 50-year old mom and her teen son use Delver to search for information on a particular film the results generated for the mom will vary greatly from that of her son, based on the differences of their respective social groups. Delver organizes and ranks content from the user’s network because social connections are critical for discovering more personally relevant information.
Delver is the first connected search company that improves the relevancy of Web search results by prioritizing these results based upon the searcher’s social network. The company’s patent-pending technology maps users’ social connections and delivers web search results ranked according to their social relevance to the users. Delver is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel and will open U.S. offices in Silicon Valley in spring 2008. Delver is backed by Carmel Ventures, a top-tier Israel-based VC. For more information, visit www.delver.com.
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com.
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