FriendFeed, Eurekster, UpTake, and Spock presenting at 4/21 AltSearchEngine Conference
On Monday April 21, I’m moderating a panel on Reaggregating User Generated Content at the invite only Alternative Search Engine get-together hosted by Read Write Web. Charles Knight of AltSeachEngines.com.
What questions should I ask the panelists? Drop a comment here and I’ll try to get the questions answered!
Here’s some info on the panel and panelists:
Q: Who are the panelists?
Jay Bhatti, Co-Founder of Spock
Yen Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of UpTake
Bret Taylor, Co-Founder of FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com/about/team
Steven Marder, Co-Founder and CEO of Eurekster
http://www.eurekster.com/about/management
Q: What is the panel about?
The Panel Topic is “Vertical Search Opportunity: Reaggregating User Generated Content”
Through blogs, social networks, and review communities, more and more user generated content is being created. Problem is, that it is increasingly getting fragmented at multiple sites. This content can be useful to people for discovery, research, and decision-making on what information to consume, what music to listen to, or what products to buy. What are the opportunities for vertical search to bring all this user generated content together?
Panelists: Your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to learn from each other and force each person in the audience to rethink their approach to user generated content because of what they have heard.
Q: What questions are you going to ask?
NOTE: I would love to get questions from you to ask. Drop a comment here to let me know what is on your mind.
Panelists: I’m only going to ask questions if the audience doesn’t. But just in case, here’s what I had in mind:
- How does your company aggregate user generated content?
- What are the most valuable sources of user generated content in your vertical space? What are the challenges of getting at those sources?
- How much do you rely on automated machine approaches vs. human approaches? Why did you choose one vs. the other?
- Is what you are doing complementary with the sources you are aggregating? Who is threatened by what you do?
- How do you use user generated content to (a) get traffic from Google, social networks, and the blogosphere?
- How do you use UGC to acquire customers? To keep them? To engage them?
Why FriendFeed belongs on this panel:
FriendFeed is a lifestream aggregator that pulls together feeds from Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, your blog, etc. By connecting with other friends, it is organizing user generated content around people…their interests…and their friends. It also has a new search feature that is desperately needed to help people use FriendFeed for discovery and search on specific topics. This is critical especially because there is more and more comments (UGC) that are entered straight into FriendFeed itself.
Why Eurekster belongs on this panel:
Eurekster allows people to create specialized search applications focused on a specific community or area of interest. It is enabling subject matter experts to layer human intelligence on top of automated search. Swikis provide a system for injecting user generated content and user contribution into a search engine. Many of the same themes are here as for FriendFeed.
Why Spock belongs on this panel:
Spock is aggregating structured and unstructured information about people. But beyond just being a people search engine, Spock also enables people and their friends and fans to participating in creating high quality people information on Spock. How machine intelligence and human participation can work together to solve people search has a similar feel to what FriendFeed is doing and Eurekster as well.
Why UpTake belongs on this panel:
UpTake is capitalizing on the increasing fragmentation of user generated content in the form of reviews, opinions, travel blogs. There is an opportunity to reaggregate and use machine intelligence to help people find the right reviews and recommendations for travel planning. Just as FriendFeed aggregates digital lifestyle, UpTake aggregates digital reviews and reputation for travel products and services.
OK your turn: What questions do you have for any of these companies? What is most interesting about the issue of reaggregating user generated content and how vertical search plays into it?
Drop a comment here by Sun 4/20 midnight and I’ll try to ask the question!
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3 Responses
One thing that always bothered me about sites using user generated content is the relative usefulness of the information when compared against a professional review. Say, for example, you go to Tripadvisor and read dozens of opinions from people who stayed in a hotel, and then you go to a hotel review from a New York Times travel editor. My point is that there’s a lot lacking when you read only user reviews. And my question here is how a reaggregator of UGC can add value to that content, because personally speaking, I find it necessary to search for more information ‘after’ reading reviews on Tripadvisor.
Elliott,
Please try to ask this question :
From your point of view, what are the main caracteristics for building a “good” Collective Intelligence with reaggregating user generated content. I give you some exemples for our readers :
a trusted environment
Mixed Explicit and implicit user-generated information
Privacy control by the end users
Credibility and reliability
a participatory company culture
A smart social network animator
“Agile” Technology
Some “fun” stuff
Other
Best regards
Claude
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