Internet search engines have become such a helpful fixture of everyday life that it’s tough to imagine life before them. They gather information at eye-blink speed, can guess a user’s intent and present real-time results from Twitter and other social sites.
But the experience of searching the Web remains largely solitary, or, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might put it — it’s not social. While you can share the end result by pasting a link into an e-mail or a tweet, there’s no way to share the cool stuff you brush past in the midst of a search.
That’s starting to change, thanks to new search products, one from a Silicon Valley startup called Blekko and one from a tech giant as mainstream as they come, Microsoft.
Blekko, a Redwood City, Calif., search engine that can be found online at blekko.com, tries to screen out spam and links promoted by search engine optimization companies, which manipulate keywords and links to try to promote their clients in search results. But as of mid-December, Blekko also allows you to use your Facebook friends to filter Internet searches. In a sense, your friends provide the search algorithm, rather than Google or Bing.
The main focus of Blekko, which launched in November and has received funding from prominent Silicon Valley investors like Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, is to use human editors to select a universe of authoritative Web sites. Blekko’s intent is to screen out spam and SEO manipulation that can make many sites less useful, particularly in topics like personal finance, music lyrics and health.
Earlier this month, Blekko also started to allow users to harness their network of Facebook friends to “curate” search results. When a Blekko user enables the service, the search engine goes out and collects the large database of Web sites and pages…