Many search engines credit themselves as being “Social Search Engines,” but many of them fail to incorporate the actual humans in the socializing aspect. We are often forced to communicate through robots who relay our searching “actions” and “preferences” to other humans. This leaves me to ask, why can’t we just talk to other humans directly?  Well now we finally can with Scour, a new and rare Social Search Engines that actually allows us humans to communicate through our own words while we search.Scour’s social focal point lies in its comment system which allows users to comment on search results and also to rate one another’s comments. Users can also vote search results up or down, determining how high or low the results should appear on the page. Additionally, there are already a surprisingly great number of comments for many of the search terms. The only problem as of now is that most of them are fairly simple, but that is expected since the system is still fairly new. Nevertheless, Scour has the potential to grow and become a search engine powerhouse for useful user generated suggestions and reviews. And as it grows I am sure the comment system will evolve and undergo tweaks which will make it far more practical. For example, currently the comments are not listed by highest ranked, but instead by whichever comment is the oldest.  A little modification would allow users to actually see the good comments and ignore the useless ones.Scour also offers users points for commenting and voting, and these points translate into Visa gift cards. The only problem is that it would take about a year to actually get the $25 gift card. However, this doesn’t matter because I wouldn’t go to this website simply for the cash reward. The main reason I would use Scour would be for the human interaction and the true social atmosphere it provides. Unfortunately, I feel as if the reward system is not allowing the community to grow as much as it can. The reason for this is because in order to comment and gain points a user must quickly register a username. Now, even though it takes no more than 30 seconds to sign-up, the overall concept of registering simply does not go over well with most people. That is why I believe that opening up the comment system to non-members and those that are just passing by would help build the social community and generate more content. The reward system can stay for those that want to use it, but the comments should be open so people can experiment and contribute.

Overall, Scour is one of the few search engines that truly lives up to its name as a “social” search engine. With a couple minor tweaks this concept could become a very useful searching tool that would allow users to truly communicate with one another about the websites they visit.Sasha notes:After contacting Scour in order to ask about future changes, I learned of several modifications which will soon take place to further improve the social experience. One of them being, as I had hoped, that the comment sorting system will soon allow the users to select their sorting preferences. Scour also pointed out that the open comment system idea has been played around with, but it will most likely remain where users would have to quickly create a user name. By Sasha Lahijanian

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Innovations, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.