3. Web search is great for objective questions, but subjective
questions generate majority of revenues
Queries Search quality
X00B/yr RPMs Examples
• What is Einstein’s birthday?
45% Great Low
Objective • How much is the cheapest iPhone?
• What’s a decent housekeeping service in
30% SF? How much should it cost for a small
Research two bedroom place?
• What’s a good book to read about
25% Ok High Romantic Poets?
Opinion
5. Improving a familiar experience
Friends already answer subjective questions, but...
• Unreliability of a small number of friends available to you in the moment
• Hard to keep up with what your extended network knows about
• Social cost of asking for a favor
Why Social Search?
• Users want personalized responses to questions
• Most content is still locked in peoples' heads
• Each individual’s network is growing exponentially
• Social intimacy makes information actionable
• Questions about how to spend your time and money are subjective
7. Minimize risk by maximizing trials
Conception:
• Picked a problem area
• Prototyped in serial
• Abandoned many attempts along the way
Implementation:
• User-centered agile engineering
• Wizard-of-oz research leading algorithmic automation
• Recruited a core team, contracted to fill gaps
• Focused on continuous acceleration
11. Team and process learnings
Experiment with process as much as with product
• Assume you are wrong
• Make continuous improvement the goal
• Hire and indoctrinate to support process
Exploit collective wisdom
• Task people to collect and disseminate learnings
• Set aside regular time for discussion
• Make transparency the default
12. Additional Aardvark reading/viewing
• White paper on Aardvark Social Search - (
http://vark.com/aardvarkfinalwww2010.pdf)
• How we do qualitative user research at Aardvark (
http://blog.vark.com/?p=314)
• Our approach to design and development processes (
http://blog.vark.com/?p=49)
• Preaching User-Driven Design (
http://ventilla.posterous.com/preaching-user-driven-design)
• Startup Lessons Learned Aardvark Case study (
http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262666882)
• Why Machines Need People (
http://blurkerlab.blogspot.com/2010/04/video-damon-horowitz-at-
tedxsoma-why.html)