Judging from the high level of interest in social search-related companies and concepts - such as Taptu, abphone, and people-powered answers search from ChaCha - expressed by participants at conferences where I have spoken, I am confident social search is more than just another hot topic.

In fact, this new breed of services, which combines mobile social networking fun and community with the utility of mobile search, potentially creates new forms of interaction and new opportunities for the delivery of relevant mobile advertising. Granted we aren’t there yet, but there are some signposts that I believe mark the way. One start-up that that stands out is HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com).

The company, based in University College Dublin, Ireland, was founded by Dr. Maurice Coyle and Dr. Peter Briggs, and is a spin-out from the research group of Prof. Barry Smyth, who is perhaps best known as co-founder and Chief Scientist of ChangingWorlds (now a Unit of Amdocs Interactive), a company that has pioneered personalization technology. I recently caught up with Barry for a guided tour of the service and an update on the company’s mobile ambitions.

I am also proud that Barry recently partnered with me to publish a series of thought leadership columns exclusively on MSG. Understandably, Barry took a break from the series (which kicked off with this exploration of the “hidden interaction costs” associated with surfing and exploring the mobile Internet) to develop his path-breaking HeyStaks service - now in Beta. But he’ll be back soon with a typically cool column focused on the intelligent delivery of personalized content and advertising, so watch this space!

What is the problem?

As the company cleverly points out in the cartoon strip below, we waste a lot of time searching for things our peers are also searching for (or may already have found!). To make matters worse, we have a lot of trouble sharing what we find with people once we find it. A solution is to make search a social activity (and that goes double for mobile search, in my view) and provide people the tools to create and communicate the searches that matter to them most.

What is HeyStaks?

HeyStaks is a search utility (a browser toolbar for both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers) that adds collaboration features and a host of social networking functions to your favorite search engine. (It currently works with Google, but Barry tells me that Yahoo and others are in the pipeline.) The beta service is squarely focused on enhancing Web search, but an iPhone app is also on the roadmap.

In a nutshell, HeyStaks allows people to collaborate while they search. With the toolbar, people can create and share what the company calls search staks, which act as repositories for search experiences. HeyStaks also improves the results list because it promotes the results that have proved to be relevant to friends/peers during similar or related searches. (More further down in the Q&A.) As Barry put it: “A search stak is like a folder of your search experiences. You can create as many search staks as you like to cover your different interests and activities.”

To show rather than tell, Barry, a long-time MSG reader and supporter, has created a search stak around MSG content. In addition to keeping all the searches together in one place, HeyStaks also “reminds” us of searches we have found interesting in the past (and previously forgot to bookmark) by highlighting them within the search results delivered and listed by Google. HeyStaks can also make recommendations by inserting other results that Google may have missed or simply buried too deep in the list of blue links for us to find. (Thanks for using MSG Barry! You’ve given me a great idea. The sceenshots below illustrate this new stak. The next step is to make the MSG stak public and so create an MSG search community where readers can join, add their recent related searches, or simply keep up to date with the search activities of the wider community. After all, knowledge is most powerful/valuable when it is shared.)

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Q: Creating and organizing the searches in HeyStaks is pretty straightforward. How do people share them?

A: Let’s take the example of you planning for a vacation. You create a search stak, call it “Vacation,” and store all your searches there. Suppose the vacation you’re planning will involve family and friends. You can share your Vacation stak with them, so that they can benefit from what you have found as they search, and vice versa. You can do this directly from the HeyStaks toolbar by selecting “Share active stak” in the staks menu. You then enter their email address and each person you invite will receive an email invitation that, if they accept, will add your stak to their own list of search staks in their toolbar. Sharing search staks in this way means that the search knowledge can rapidly grow because relevant searches from your friends and family are added to the Vacation search stak.

Q: HeyStaks can also highlight results in the search results from, say, Google and promote these to the top of the ranking. How is this possible?

A: We have a couple of ways to help people get more out of search. Once you share a stak you have essentially created a search activity feed that will provide you with a live update of searches carried out related to the stak - or staks - you have chosen to share.

At a deeper level, HeyStaks is looking at the various searches that different members of your staks are performing. It’s looking for patterns in those searches, and it’s looking for results that are related to those patterns.  So, you’re not just reminded of results that were clicked for the exact same query by other members of the stack. HeyStaks goes one further and actually figures out that certain results may be relevant to similar queries that haven’t been used before.  So, it’s a way of helping people to understand the sort of things that you’re finding interesting in a particular context, and making sure that everyone else who is sharing in that context is getting the benefit of your finds and you’re getting the benefit of theirs. Put another way, the stak is gradually learning more and more about your interests and is able to better predict those interests and better highlight the results from Google that are likely to serve those interests.

Returning to the Vacation stak example, the  screenshot below shows a typical search using Google and how HeyStaks has highlighted two particular results and promoted these to the top of the ranking. These results were previously selected by other members of the stak for similar queries. HeyStaks has picked up on these being results that others in the community have found interesting and therefore promoted these at the right time and within the right context.

Q: How else can I promote results in what Google delivers to me and others in my search community?

A: Using the toolbar’s tagging function, users can manually add any Web page to a stak. This makes it easy for users to add important pages that would not normally appear in Google’s results, for example. So, going back to the Vacation example, let’s say you find an offer at a hotel after clicking down deeper into the site. Finding this result again is going to require some extra effort, and the others in your community are sure to miss it. How do you make sure the result you found will catch their attention? HeyStaks solved the problem by letting you tag the page from the toolbar, using a tag you choose. You add it to the Vacation stak and - when you search using similar queries in the future or your fiends and family search - HeyStaks will promote this previously hidden result for all the stak members in the search community to see. This tagging feature is a practical way for HeyStaks to mine the deep Web that is all too often invisible to major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Q: What are the opportunities and use cases highest on your radar?

A: There’s a very important enterprise search opportunity here, particularly when we look at those enterprise 2.0 tools that promote collaboration within the enterprise as a side effect of capturing certain important pieces of knowledge. Some studies estimate as much as 10 percent of salary costs are effectively wasted because people aren’t able to find what they’re looking for easily. So, there’s lost productivity there and a huge opportunity for HeyStaks.

Using HeyStaks in the enterprise would allow an organization to capture all of that latent search knowledge that is lost as people perform the searches. HeyStaks allows searchers to share that knowledge, so that novice searchers in the organization can benefit from the expertise of more practiced searchers. It’s a way for organizations to start to parcel up the various different types of search knowledge that they have. You could also imagine that, as a new project starts in an organization, it’s just a matter of creating a new search stak to capture the relevant information that is found during the course of that project.

Q: Search results become content. Do you see opportunities in publishing and social media?

A: Yes, there are also huge opportunities in what I’ll call the consumer space. Individuals can create a small number of staks and share them with a small number of friends. You can even envisage larger staks being created by special interest websites or media portals, for example. They could create a stak, populate it with relevant search results, and share that stak with their subscribers, readers, or website visitors.

In the context of MSearchGroove, for example, you can create an MSearchGroove stak, feed that stak with relevant information, and share it with your readers. This way, any time they perform a search which happened to be relevant to MSearchGroove, MSearchGroove results would be promoted within the result list that comes back from Google. So, it’s a way of helping your subscribers get a more personalized version of the Google results list that takes account of the sort of interests they have as subscribers to your site.

CREATE MSearchGroove stak

TAG cool content

PROMOTE pages in Google results for everyone to share

Q: You are focused on your Beta, but iPhone is also in the pipeline. Describe the fit with mobile and how it might intersect with social networking.

A: HeyStaks has created a whole social networking site based around your search activities and if you go onto HeyStaks.com, you will see the social networking that is built around people’s search patterns.  Just like Facebook provides you with social networking services around your friends and your interests and what you do on a daily basis, HeyStaks.com provides you with social networking around your search interests, what you’ve been searching for, the various stacks that you have created, the people that you’ve shared stacks with, and what they have been searching for.

That sort of information can be readily made available as part of a mobile interface so that people can have access to their search communities on the go and they can keep up to date with what other people [in their community or organization] have been finding, for example, especially in projects that are related to their work interests.

Q: What are the business models that would make this possible?

A: I think what’s appealing is the sort of software as a service model. We would envisage keeping the basic service free of charge for all to use. However, for certain types of users who wanted to take advantage of more sophisticated services, if they wanted to create a very large stack and potentially share it with thousands of users; there might be a subscription-based charge.  Ad-funded is another potential source of revenue.

My take: There is plenty of room for innovation in the search space. HeyStaks provides us a glimpse of the future of social search and an important confirmation of the increasing importance of people in the equation. HeyStaks isn’t mobile yet, but when it is it could be game-changing. (Indeed, social search, sharing and community go hand in hand. Taptu, a socially-assisted search service “gets” this - which is why it has recently introduced features and functionality that allow people to share their search results.) Although HeyStaks is aimed at turning our simple search queries into serious content, I also see opportunities for brands to enhance (rather than interrupt) the information flow. In this scenario, search queries and results, created and maintained by tight-knit social networks passionate about their quests, could provide a starting point for brands to get actively involved in the exchange, and even lend a hand in the search by suggesting related answers/products/services members are likely to appreciate. But why stop there? Brands could also post search staks around topics where we need and appreciate some solid advice (such as recipes for food manufacturers, how-to tips for repairs around the house, or remedies for colds/flu or whatever ails us). What a great way to add value for a change!

The realization that mobile advertising is ripe for a re-think (and the stark possibility that traditional advertising inventory may be dead on the mobile platform, as Alan Moore, author luminary and founder of the communication consultancy SMLXL, suggests) forces operators, brands, enablers and agencies to focus on what many are calling engagement marketing.

At the other end of the spectrum, this shift in mindset also turns up the pressure on mobile search providers to develop services that are (likewise) more useful, engaging and personal. Indeed, improving the mobile search user experience is at the center of a sustainable and successful mobile search and advertising strategy. Users are encouraged to explore the wealth of content and applications at their fingertips, and their urge to discover leads to more queries and more opportunities to deliver paid search advertising. It’s not quite the fixed Internet all over again, but there are similarities.

The outcome is a virtuous cycle where useful search results and targeted advertising convince users that mobile search is a useful way to find content and applications that matter to them. What’s more, the advance of app stores (similar to the excitement the industry experienced when content portals were the rage) underlines the critical importance of a better interplay between search and advertising moving forward.

I am therefore encouraged by improvements (from companies such as Yahoo), and excited by the increasing popularity of new mobile search paradigms, ranging from multimodal search (which has received a much-needed boost thanks to the iPhone); to approaches that integrate human input/judgment to deliver search results we’re much more likely to appreciate. (I am currently compiling a comprehensive directory of mobile search providers, so please contact me to be included. If your story is interesting, I will also profile your company on MSG.)

A category of mobile search high on my radar is visual search. (Companies include: Idée, IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow and SnapTell.) I am pleased to report I am close to confirming a date for a podcast with Philipp Schloter, Nokia’s general manager of Point & Find. Nokia (which MSG covered here) just last week took the wraps off a new beta of its visual search service. The technology is cool but the real excitement is about the fit with mobile marketing campaigns. As Julian Pate, Client Partner at interactive marketing agency AKQA, put it in a statement: “The Nokia Point & Find service marries the digital world with the physical world in a way that actually has meaning for brands and consumers. Not only does it allow consumers to engage with brands in an innovative way but provides brands ‘point and purchase’ opportunities with an on-the-go audience.”

This same value proposition is echoed by SnapNow, a U.S.-based visual search company I profiled in my regular column for EContent magazine.

In it I examine the proliferation of pilots and projects that harness mobile to hyperlink images and items, enabling consumers to access information, make purchases or just browse the Web for similar cool content, by simply snapping a picture using their cameraphones. I also interview Tony Keaveny, Head of Sales for SnapNow UK, who updates me on what the company is doing to “snap-enable” content ranging from print to video.

As Tony puts it: “Your phone becomes your mouse and the world around us becomes the Web. It’s about transforming print, packaging, video, outdoor, or just about any other advertising into a portal enabling communication and - more importantly - commerce.”

Tony walks the talk, which is why he has also kindly offered to “snap-enable” the MSG logo, which means you can get more information about MSG by taking a picture of the logo with your cameraphone and sending it to pic@snapnow.co.uk. I’ll think of a contest to make it worth your while. In the meantime, this is  great (!) because MSG is in demand as a media partner and now you can connect to MSG via the  logo on brochures and posters  at industry conferences such as the Open Mobile Summit, June 10-11 in London, a top-notch industry conference organized by OpenMobileMedia, where I chair the session on mobile advertising.  I invite you to read the column here - and to explore the other great content at EContent.

On a personal note, I am proud to be a contributing editor and look forward to collaborating with Michelle Manafy, EContent Editor-in-chief on a special social media issue sure to set the bar. More about that when I put out a call for pitches here and on Twitter (@peggyanne). Michelle is also the programming chair of Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summits (ESS), annual events that encourage deep discussion and practical analysis of the search space. The next one is May 12-13 in NYC. This week Michelle wraps up Buying and Selling EContent Conference, an event that brings together leading executives knowledgeable in the techniques for buying and selling content. She gives her views on the marketplace and the role of user-generated content in this pre-conference audio interview.

But visual search is just one of the 15 categories I have identified in the process of compiling a comprehensive overview and SWOT analysis of the major mobile search players, together with Rudy De Waele, Mobile Web 2.0 luminary and founder of dotopen, an open innovation consulting firm advising start-ups and established companies helping them define business models, forge alliances and pursue funding opportunities.

Our work is in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), an organization providing customer-driven support to the EU policy-making process.  The purpose of the workshop next week in Seville, Spain, is to identify mobile search trends and recommendations for policy makers. I cannot attend the event, but look forward to publishing a summary analysis of key points raised during the workshop on MSG.

Connect the dots, and mobile search innovation is shaping up to be a major focus in 2009.

The last word on the increasing importance of mobile search comes from Nokia (via AltSearchEngines.com). During his presentation Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia’s new Markets unit, told the audience mobile is the future of search. (Hmmm…Does this conviction mark a new chapter in Nokia’s own mobile search strategy? It’s a topic I’ll raise in my upcoming podcast…)

Regular readers will know that MSG has teamed up with AltSearchEngines (published by my friend, colleague and the “voice of alternative search” Charles Knight) to enhance its mobile search coverage and ultimately create a forum where the two communities can explore the greater issues around search, discovery and recommendation.

This week, Charles and I take a giant step in that direction when we meet up (in person - finally!) to host a dinner and discussion for search companies from across Europe. Our event in Berlin on October 22 - timed to Web 2.0 Expo, a companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit and the U.S. Web 2.0 Expos in San Francisco and New York, organized by O’Reilly Media and Techweb - can be seen as a forerunner to the thought leadership roundtables we will co-create moving forward.

We have purposely chosen not to publicize the dinner widely and to limit the audience to a select number of search company executives. It’s a decision we feel enables us to encourage community, discuss the issues impacting search, and debate the solutions.

Topics and speakers are listed here, and include ubiquitous search (Mozilla Labs Head of User Experience Aza Raskin - who incidentally gave his first talk on UI at the age of 10! - explains how search can be enhanced to provide truly rich interaction inside the browser); peer-to-peer search (FAROO CEO Gosia Garbe discusses the democratization of the Internet, the impact of our judgment on search results and indexes, and the future of search in the cloud and beyond); and mobile search (I will discuss the mobile search and advertising trends high on my radar). Since all search is moving mobile, I look forward to connecting with new companies and people I can profile and follow on MSG.

In that vein, allow me to recount some news and developments you may have missed.

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Just a quick note to update (and thank!) the many mobile companies who contacted me to be considered for inclusion in the eContent 100, a list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry. I was chosen to judge the categories Mobile Content, Search Engine & Technologies, Collaboration and Social Media. Round 2 of the judging ends tomorrow but, since I’ll be in London on business, I’m wrapping up my voting today.

Some initial observations: I am surprised and inspired by the breadth and quality of the companies, again sure-fire signs that the mobile search market will not be dominated by the usual suspects.

Granted, the U.S. market share of all the alternative search engines combined equals only a few percentage points. (My esteemed colleague and partner Charles Knight at AltSearchEngines counts 1,400 - 100 of which are serious players.) However, the PC is not mobile.

On a personal device other factors (such as location, context, relevancy, behavior) play in favor of a Long Tail of mobile search engines. And there’s a better chance they’ll make money since we will expect (and embrace) a vastly different mobile search experience. (Think of the companies that won the recent Mobile Search Awards and you’ll get where I’m coming from…)

Another development that stands out: The first-ever appearance of ad networks (because they have correctly opted to offer publishers super-cool tools and support), social networks and dynamic personalization companies in the nominee list.

In my view, this underlines profound changes underway in the mobile content creation / delivery / monetization value chain. But will the industry generate enough revenue to feed them all? My string of conferences, briefings and meet-ups tells me consolidation is inevitable…

More observations and impressions as I work my way through the list of top-notch companies. This year’s eContent 100 will rock!

MSG has impact. Online destinations, partner sites, event organizers and universities consult regularly with MSG to develop projects, plan industry conferences and discuss editorial contributions. Beyond a significant increase in the number of visitors, the site has grown a reputation for in-depth analysis, thought leadership and integrity - qualities that ensure MSG’s voice is heard and will continue to be heard throughout the industry.

I want you to lend your voice to MSG and join this conversation.

MSG is a multiplier. But, more importantly, MSG is an amplifier, helping a broad and eclectic mix of companies, executives, columnists and pundits deliver their message loud and clear. The response has been overwhelmingly positive - feedback that encourages me to break new ground and extend these opportunities to you. As a rule I will post all projects and deadlines at MSG, and always be open to your ideas and input.

Next on the list: The Annual EContent 100. From now until August I and the other judges will compile and review a list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry. I have been chosen to judge the categories Mobile Content, Search Engine & Technologies and Social Media.

EContent judges are the first and last word on companies that will be considered for or named to the list. However, companies in these categories are most welcome to provide me with information and arrange telephone briefings/demos. Whether or not you’ve been on the list in the past, I invite you to reach out to me directly at peggy@msearchgroove.com.

The list of EContent 2007 winners can be found here. It included Apple (Mobile Content), Automatic (Social Media), Autonomy (Search), Awareness (Social Media), Bango (Mobile Content), Basis Technology (Search), Business Objects (Search), Coveo (Search), Digg (Social Media), Drupal (Social Media), dtSearch Corp. (Search), Endeca (Search), FAST (Search), Google (Search), Groxis (Search), ISYS (Search), LinkedIn (Social Media), LTU Technologies (Search), Medio (Mobile Content), Mondosoft (Search), Nexidia (Search), Nokia (Mobile Content), Quattro Wireless (Mobile Content), Recommind (Search), RIM (Mobile Content), Six Apart (Social Media), Technorati (Social Media), TikiWiki (Social Media), Vivisimo (Search) and Wikia (Social Media).

(Please note that your contacting me does not compel me to put any company name on the final list of contenders and, of course, in no way guarantees that any company will be named to the list.)

In-Brief: Julian Bourne, CEO & Founder of Proxpro, a GPS software developer, takes the wraps off a new service and walks us though how location AND time will likely play together to make mobile services a more meaningful (translated: indispensable) part of our daily routine.

Regular readers will recall that Proxpro, a provider of mobile search and proximity social networking tools, recently developed a matchmaking service to help mobile professionals to find and meet people who matter. The company’s patented technology and algorithms discover people nearby who match pre-specified interests. The service then sends a text message to both and, if both agree, a face-to-face meeting can take place within minutes.

Proxpro’s CEO & Founder Julian Bourne, a pioneer in what I’ll call proximity social search, recently called me from Boston to fill me in on some new technology that could benefit mobile services of all kinds and flavors - not just mobile search.

The excitement is around Proxpro Prompt, a GPS service in beta that effectively fuses the device’s digital calendar with GPS to tell users exactly when they have to leave to make the next appointment based on a real-time understanding of traffic conditions and related factors. In a nutshell, by integrating GPS with the calendar, Proxpro compares current location with the time and location of the user’s next appointment, and 30 minutes before the best departure time a “when to leave” alert pops up automatically on the user’s mobile device. A map displays the fastest route and the current traffic conditions. (Download it here and circle back to tell us what you think http://wap.proxpro.com/prompt)

The application, currently only available in North America and on BlackBerry 8800 or Curve devices, is creating quite a buzz in the blogosphere. The value prop around services in synch with users’ time and place is cool and easy to communicate. Julian reports 1,500 downloads in just three days, a response that speaks volumes about the future requirements for services we use on the fly.

Sure, we want services that tell us how things are (for example: weather and news), where things are (for example: maps and directions), and what everyone is up to (for example: Twitter, Buddyping, and MyGamma). But there’s no reason to stop there. Combine personalization with pattern recognition and mobile technology becomes more intelligent and more resourceful. Get the mix right - as Prompt has - and it’s possible for an individual user to make a better judgment about future events - if not predict them.

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