Finally, the Powerset.

Powerset, one of the ‘Alt Search Engine Service’ launched this week.

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I heard about this company last year when have worked for Web Search engine company – Rebi.

I don’t know whether Powerset will become great company or not since they have unveiled their true product just few days ago but I’m really happy to see their service. (Surely I’m not stock holder of Powerset and also not anti-google people.)

I can imagine about their great effort and endurance to make their idea as a ‘real thing’ for several years.

‘Make something as real one’ – how fascinate it is!

Empas testing new music search service.

Empas acquired by SK Communications (the following, SK Coms) in June 2006.

SK Coms’ corporate parent is ‘SK Telecom (the following, SKT)’ which is no.1 mobile telecommunications operator in Korea.

With it great leading power in mobile business area and endless cash flow, SKT have acquired Cyworld 2003 and egloos in 2006 and made them business group under SK Coms.

Late 2006, many people were looking forward to seeing new services launched by SK Coms next year, because they already have juicy personal database and contents with its own web service Cyworld, Egloos.(As you know Cyworld have become the biggest community service ever in Korea since 2004.)

“Cyworld had database. Now it has search engine technology to use its database. Daum and Naver should be careful.”

This was common ideas among people in Web service business area.

But it was not that impressive. Search and news services make Cyworld have more rich contents but not that rich.

Many people disappointed. So did I.

I’m envious of Cyworld’s market position because of my personal interests in personalized service.

SK Coms scarcely show its real potentials with Empas.

I heard that some technical problem raying behind merging to service but anyway neo-Cyworld in 2007 was so disappointing.

Yesterday I found interesting an event in Cyworld(Empas) – Search music with your feeling.

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Actually Empas have launched BGM search with its open search concept in 2005 but not that successful. There was similar concept BGM search service Qbox slightly opened ‘earlier’ than Empas.

New featured music search this March have some different factors than that old one.

1. No missing BGM links.

Later Empas BGM search find some missing BGM links. Owner of Cyworld minihome usually change his or her BGM frequently but update of indexed information of Empas couldn’t follow that.

This time it seems that the search engine system successfully merged with Cyworld music database. There are no missing links in my search result.

2. Bring concept of ‘feelings’.

Cyworld have had ‘Today is..?’ feature in minihome. Users can express their feeling with certain icons.

This time ‘collaborative filtering’ used once again to find relationship between feeling and BGM. That algorithm already has been applied in music item shop to recommend BGM to users in Cyworld.

Since ‘feeling’ is really subjective thing, it’s not easy to make conclusion whether ‘search with feeling’ working precisely or not.

Conclusion

I think SK Coms has good tactics in there days.

There recent ‘Cyworld People’ and ‘music search with feeling’ services are well focused on their strengths – the people and personalized data.

Irrelevant to its success, I will watch carefully what’s going on this new music search service.

(Actually speaking I really love music.)

The next step of Rebi search.

Original Post : Chunk View

My former company Rebi Search has disclosed its meaningful result of search engine prototype – Chunk View.

Though I don’t know exactly about detailed research process after I left Rebi, I’m sure that this Chunk view promise people different web search result (= hope) with that of former search engines include Google.

The Chunk View may improve search engine with ‘colorful understanding’ about links and website.
– Just my guess 🙂

“The Search” by John Battelle

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

Inspiration : ★★☆
Information : ★★☆

First I didn’t consider reading this book because I already read another book about google – The google story. But in contrast with ‘The google story’, this book allows me great understandings about search engine and history of IT business. It also gives some tips of IT start-up ventures.

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– 때때로 위대한 혁신은 우주로부터 오는 것이 아니라 기업내부에서부터 나타난다. 그래서 몇몇 기술기업들은 공개질의가 가능하고, 실패를 용인해주며, 자원의 제약없이 연구할 수 있고, 공개적인 협력을 장려하는 연구의 정신을 이해하고 육성한다.
– 내가 만난 스필버그는 하루종일 자신의 주위에 있는 것들을 창의적으로 발전시키고자 머리를 쓰면서 돌아다니는 사람이었다. 나는 그와 만나기전까지만 해도 사람들은 일을 잘할 때가 있으면 못할 때도 있다고 생각했었다. 그런데 그는 하루종일 완벽하게 자신의 일을 하고 있었다. 정말 대단하지 않은가?
– First to Market wins
– 웹이 시간의 축을 갖게 된다면 검색자는 날짜를 지정해서 검색할 수 있다.

[Scrap]Can Google Be Beat? They Already Have Been in South Korea…

Original Post from Read/Write Web : Click here

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Can Google Be Beat? They Already Have Been in South Korea…Written by Richard MacManus / July 12, 2007 / 15 comments

The International Herald Tribune had a good article recently about the search market in South Korea

. It points out that local search company Naver.com

has more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, according to Internet market research company KoreanClick. This is largely due to user-generated content – specifically Naver’s “Knowledge iN” real-time question-and-answer platform, which gets “an average of 44,000 questions a day”. Second in the South Korean search market is another local product, Daum.net, with 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo’s Korean-language service with 4.4 percent. Google has only 1.7 percent of Korean Web searches.
The IHT has more info on Naver Knowledge iN:

“Naver has so far accumulated a user-generated database of 70 million entries. Typical queries include why North Korea is building a nuclear bomb, which digital music player is best, why people have hair whorls and what a high-school boy should do when he has a crush on a female teacher.
Lacking the full-time editorial oversight found on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, some Naver entries are of dubious veracity and attract vigorous rebuttals. But many respondents, keen to build and maintain an online reputation, do careful research to provide useful answers.”

Interestingly, this has some similarities with the approach of Viewpoints, the online reviews company profiled yesterday by our own Phil Butler. But what also struck me about Naver’s approach is that it is essentially what Yahoo is attempting to do, with its heavily-promoted Answers product. If you look at just about any Yahoo content site, you’ll see an Answers section displayed prominently.

Of course, the Q&A format hasn’t escaped Google’s attention either (nothing gets past Google). The Mountain View company is experimenting with Google Answers in Russia. Also, as SearchEngineLand noted, Google has tried making its UI more attractive in Korea in order to get more market share. If this kind of experimentation (Q&A, UI innovation) sounds familiar, it’s because it is precisely what our network blog AltSearchEngines talks about every day 🙂

Pic c/o SEL
Of course Q&A won’t be the answer for every market – Google is very entrenched as the number 1 search engine in the US and most other english language markets. But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting ‘next generation’ search methods. Also don’t forget that as mobile phones begin to be used more in the US and similar markets, user-generated content and personalization will be used more by Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other companies.
I do think this is Yahoo’s best chance of making ground on Google, because they are strong in both user-generated content and mobile. Although as yet Yahoo Answers is nowhere near as compelling a product as Naver is in Korea.

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Interesting & meaningful article.

‘But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting ‘next generation’ search methods’