Social networks have grown in prominence in 2005, and have found a powerful ally and supporter in Yahoo!. The Internet giant began this focus by acquiring the social photo sharing and tagging site Flickr, and followed up by later purchasing the social bookmarking service del.icio.us. Both sites allow users to tag items with keywords, which can then be used to identify those items in searches that the users can conduct.
Yahoo! also launched Yahoo! Answers, which allows users to ask and answer each other’s questions. Yahoo!’s My Web 2.0 is a beta version of a social search engine that allows users to combine the benefits of search and sites that users have tagged in order to find recommended results that are ranked by people.
These forms of social networking that are helping to spearhead Web 2.0 into 2006 will only grow in popularity and importance, as more keywords will be searchable, which means that even more personalized and recommended content will be available for users. And as spam sites continue to pervade the search engine scene, it will be interesting to see whether or not Web users will look more to social bookmarks and social search engines for answers to their queries.
Social networking is not without its flaws, which include single word categories, a lack of a mechanism to clearly define or filter these categories, no synonym or antonym controls, a lack of hierarchy, and no related terms function. Will users be content with the simplified format of these social networks, or will they demand and expect more complex and intricate features in 2006?
Though Yahoo!’s aggressive venture into the field of social media and networking has propelled many of these sites into the mainstream, it remains to be seen how other competitors will respond in 2006, and whether new acquisitions and services will present Yahoo! with increased competition in the field.
Sources:
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/
nb060102-1.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_
bookmarking
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