Richard MacManus has part 1 of a very nice overview of “Search 2.0” companies and technologies, written by Ebrahim Ezzy of Qube. There are many facets to this category of search, however to my mind almost all of them are social or collaborative in nature. Google of course already implements this through the way it aggregates user behaviors in its ranking. However you get the same results when you do a search on Google, whoever you are. Central to the next phase is that you start getting results that are relevant to you and your interests. While there are many approaches to this, I believe that doing this well is most likely to be based on understanding people’s profiles relative to their search and information usage patterns – in other words social networks and collaborative filtering. These approaches can be self-selecting, for example in forming peer groups to share search results, or through algorithms. However it is clear that effort must be minimized – several of the current generation of Search 2.0 are still require too much manual input. This whole space is just opening out now, and will take many years to evolve. But those who can truly help people get better search results in a world of infinite information, will undoubtedly do extremely well.

Today I received my first approach as a blogger by a PR agency, trying to promote their client’s wares to me. I guess that indicates a certain level of success, though the top bloggers are swamped not just by PR agencies, but also by other bloggers, all trying to get links and attention. Influence is now not held just by journalists, but by anyone who chooses to set up a blog and happens to attract a reasonable audience. In fact, bloggers can be stronger “opinion-makers” than journalists, because they are often perceived (rightly or wrongly) as less in thrall to corporate power.

By sheer coincidence, I happen to be a “customer” of the company the PR agency was flogging, and I think they offer something worth highlighting, so it was worth their while approaching me. The company, freeconferencecall.com, offers, not surprisingly, free conference calls. I use them for all my conference calls. Previously I have had occasional technical glitches, but recently everything has worked fine, and it’s a very good service at a very agreeable price. Their business model is supported by getting a portion of the cost of the inbound call (which is not an 800 number). Their new offering is Simple Voice Box 2.0, which is a free unlimited length voice mailbox system, which allows people to dial in to hear messages, creates .wav files for distribution, includes RSS subscription etc. Again, what seems like a great offering at the right price. Helping keep telco competitors on their toes, something they still need.

For those of you out there who have not yet set yourself up with an RSS feed reader, the better to tap the best of the Internet, TechCrunch provides a brief but useful review and comparison of the major online feed readers. There are certainly other ways of tapping RSS feeds, including PC-based software applications and Outlook-integrated applications, however most people still use online feed readers, as they are easy to set up and use. Bloglines, Newsgator, and Rojo are still probably the most used by the major bloggers, but there is a continual array of new players in this space. Since each provides default feed suggestions, this helps to support their revenue models.

Big news: Google has just bought Upstartle, the owner of Writely. Writely is basically an online word processor that looks and feels pretty much like Microsoft Word. You can create, edit, and format documents, as well as upload and download documents from your PC. The biggest single advantage is that anyone you choose can also edit the document, instantly creating a simple, powerful collaborative spaces. For a while now, when people have talked to me about wikis, I’ve pointed them to Writely as the next step beyond. Wikis were the original collaborative documents, allowing multiple people to make changes online. Writely and its peers take it to the next level in allowing the same level of collaboration, with in addition all the interfaces and functionality you expect from a normal desktop application.

Google’s move – once the beta software is developed further, scaled, and integrated into some of Google’s other product offerings – is to confront Microsoft head on. If you want word processing software, you will be able to buy a shrink-wrap product from Microsoft, or get a very-likely free (advertising-supported) version from Google that has the same functionality, with full collaborative features and anywhere-anytime access as well. However, people have not paid a lot of attention to date on Microsoft’s (also beta) Live suite of products, which represents their initial efforts to get into exactly the same space. Dean Collins thinks that this means Microsoft will trample Google. Rather than calling winners, we can certainly say that office applications will gradually become significantly – and eventually primarily – an online space. The potential for collaboration will be unleashed as these applications become broadly available and easy to use, and some will look back on the old days of desktop applications as antiquated. The game is under way.

I believe that “collaborative filtering” is at the heart of how the networks are coming to life. The basic concept is that we must collaborate to filter the massive information overload we face. We can do this simply by taking the recommendations of friends we know and trust. However now software can amalgamate the views and perspectives of thousands or millions of people to direct you to the information or entertainment that is uniquely relevant to you. One of the many domains in which collaborative filtering can be applied is music, by recommending or playing music based on your preferences.

Last.FM, which I last wrote about in this blog in 2003, has developed a lot further, and seems to have gained critical mass. Last.FM’s underlying recommendation engine, Autoscrobbler, is now also available separately, helping to fund Last.FM’s free, no-advertising offering. Last.FM creates personalized radio stations based on people’s preferences, and makes recommendations based on what other people with similar tastes like. As such, it is intrinsically based on social networks, and also provides group functionality so people with similar taste can interact. A newer service, Pandora, works quite differently. It uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze music based on its rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic structure, instrumentation, production qualities, lyrics and so on. You seed the service by nominating a song or an artist, and it creates an entire radio station from that. You can also provide feedback on your preferences, as in Last.FM. The service is available for free with advertising, or there is an advertising-free subscription service. Pandora raised $12 million last November, bringing its total raised to over $22 million, showing the faith investors have in the value of these models. However one venture capitalist prefers Last.FM to Pandora in an interesting comparison of the two services. Check out these music services and support them! The better they get, the more we can discover and listen to the music we love the best from the many millions of songs produced every year.