January 30th, 2008
Delver debuts socially connected search engine
Delver introduced its socially connected search engine, which uses public profiles from social networks to improve the relevancy of search results. “People want trusted information from their friends,” Liad Agmon, CEO of Delver told me at Demo 08. “We aggregate your social graph.”
Delver prioritizes results based on a user’s network by indexing information from social networking profiles, blogs, photo and video sharing sites and other services. It displays the social connections (or contacts) it was able to find in a graphical layout. Search results are ranked based upon the strength of the social connections. As a result, the wisdom of friends and friends of friends of friends is surfaced, giving each user a custom result that reflects their social connections. People closer to you in the social graph are given higher rank than friends of friends in the search results.
Similar to the people search engine Spock, Delver allows registered users to can claim their profiles and verify the data sources. The business model for the venture funded company from Israel is advertising. Delver will go into private beta next month and be released to the public in May, Agmon said.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
