thinks

TechCrunch announced that VibeAgent launched today. Speaking as a guy working for a hotel company, it’’s pretty cool. The weight VibeAgent gives to reviews to determine search relevance is excellent, and a feature other social search engines would do well to copy, er, liberate, er, emulate. I agree with TechCrunch that they’’re swimming upstream against TripAdvisor - and may be neither different enough, nor clear enough to consumers - to capture that side of the market. But its underlying concepts provide an excellent model for other social search sites. More important, it provides businesses with an excellent view of what consumers may expect in their search results going forward and what types of content businesses will need to ensure they’’re found in those results.

Is your business engaged with your customers using social media? In this excellent writeup of why small businesses should participate in the social dialogue, Yellowhouse explores how consumers use these tools. Even better, Ze Frank pointed out at the Forrester Consumer Forum last week how brands help provide context for their customers. Also at the Forum, Sam Decker captured 10 steps for participating in a meaningful way. Simply put, there’s no reason not to provide context to your customers within the social sphere. Your customers now experience your brand in these spaces, engaging in a dialogue with one another. Are you interested in listening? Are you part of the dialogue?

Linda Bustos over at Get Elastic offers up a big list of examples of retailers using social media for marketing. Fantastic opportunity to see what others are doing and learn from their practices.

Fred asks a great question. The strange reality of social networks is that they’re often more network than social. Anne had her say on this a few weeks ago. But the question remains: How connected offline are you with the folks you’re connected with online? More importantly: Does it matter?

A study reported in the BBC claims Facebook is bad for business and recommends companies block access. For real? This sounds a lot like the talk we all heard when the internet itself was still a pup. Now, blocking access to the web at work seems draconian and short-sighted. What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.

So here’s what happens when Google meets Facebook, eh? GoogleBook. [Appears to be down at this point.] Ionut Alex poses an interesting question about what happens (if and) when Google starts using items from your friends’ history along with your own to deliver results. If that isn’t social search, I don’t know what is.