I did a Google image search yesterday and was surprised to find a collection of photos from friends at the top of the results. It was pretty darned cool, but I have to admit that I was startled by this. Maybe I'm the last guy to know about it, but Google started rolling out bits of Social Search as early as last October. I decided to ramp up on my knowledge of what this all means, which led me to the Google Blog post entitled "Search is getting more social".

There are plenty of cool features in the hopper, but being able to aggegate the blog postings of people in your own social network alone has some great benefits. The blog post makes an example of all the Google staffers that are having their first babies right about now and how nice it is to find reviews of baby stores, etc. from folks they know and trust. I'm a fairly new daddy myself, so I have come to rely heavily on the advice of friends on matters of baby food, swim lessons and consignment shops... it's invaluable to me and holds much more weight than an anonymous online review. Face it, we're a society that posts a lot online - blogs, Facebook content and Tweets - and we can't possibly keep up with everything our friends say now, can we? Nope... but Social Search should be able to help us delve right through it all to find what we are looking for.

So far, I didn't find any references to semantic meaning analysis in Social Search, which is an area that OpenAmplify excels in... perhaps there is a synergy to be tapped here? Either way, I'm excited to put Social Search through its paces.