The explosive growth of social media and real time web has compelled both Google and Bing to take notice. Bing’s decision engine will be utilising Twitter (already in action) and Facebook while Google will be using Twitter to provide real time results. Both of them already use YouTube videos and Google started utilising audio streams provided by partners like Lala and iLike yesterday. Web searches are also set to become a lot more personal. Google Social Search just marks the beginning. In fact it won’t be an exaggeration to state that internet search as a whole is undergoing drastic changes.
While the major search engines are busy figuring out the best way to tap into the social web, a new start-up called Kikin has come up with their own solution. Kikin is a browser extension which integrates relevant results from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and clipfish into your search results. Kikin is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows and Safari and Firefox on Mac. It works with Google, Bing and Yahoo search.
Kikin can even connect to your Facebook and Twitter account and display results from your personal stream. The Facebook and Twitter integration is fabulous. The results pane has in-built social abilities like retweet and reply (comment and like for Facebook).
Kikin is a real gem, which works because it allows you to choose what you want. It mixes the real time web and social web (and more) to produce stellar results. The integration is non-obtrusive and the interface is stylish, simple and effective. Once you get accustomed to Kikin, you would begin wondering, “Why can’t Google or Bing offer such harmonious integration of the social web?”
the search engine wars.. everyone want to have some bit of everything.. wondering how future search engine gonna be..