Posts tagged google search social media
Google makes its first acquisition in the UK
Apr 12th
Google has made its first acquisition in the UK, and it’s not the kind of heavy -hitter you might expect the giant to snap up.
Visual search company, Plink, is just a two-man start-up, based out of Oxford. It’s founders Mark Cummins and James Philbin are now both joining Google to work on Google Goggles.
Publically launched just four months ago, the site shot past 50,000 users in just four short weeks.
The company’s first product, PlinkArt, enables users to identify paintings and artworks with just a snap from their phone’s camera. Once recognised, users can read information on the artwork and artist, share their favourite pieces with friends, or even order a print to hang on their wall.
“We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today,” said Cummins and Philbin in a posting on Plink’s company blog.
“Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up.” Read the rest of this entry »
Google adds social media activity to search results
Oct 28th
Google has launched Social Search facility that enables users to discover publicly available web content from their social circle online.
Currently still in its experimental stage, when using Social Search users will sometimes see a special set of “results from people in your social circle” towards the bottom of the results page.
These social results include relevant websites, blogs, status updates, and other publicly-available content from users’ online friends and contacts.
So, for example, if a user was planning a trip to Cairo, and a friend of theirs happened to have listed great places to stay on their website, Google Social Search makes it much easier to find this kind of content.
“This is about making your search results even more relevant. For some searches, what your friends have published online might be exactly what you want,” said Director of Product Management at Google, Tom Stocky.
“For example, say you’re looking for movie reviews and one of your friends happened to write about that movie on his blog — you would probably want to read it, and that’s what Social Search makes it easier to find.”
Google account holders can try out the experimental tool via google.com/labs.
Social Search gives results from their friends, such as users’ Gmail chat friends as well as their contacts on the social sites they choose to list on their Google Profile.
For instance, if a user has added their Twitter account to their Google Profile page, tweets from the people they follow may be included in their social results
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