Search gets social

Vivisimo has introduced social search to the enterprise in the latest version of its enterprise search platform. Vivisimo reports that Velocity 6.0 will enable enterprises to increase collaboration among workers, accelerate innovation and gain valuable insight into the collective intelligence of their organizations.

By combining Web 2.0 concepts such as social networking, virtual folders, tagging and content mash-ups with the power of enterprise search, Velocity 6.0 enables users to easily tap the enormous human knowledge contained within their own organizations.

A key capability of Version 6.0 is social tagging, which allows users to vote on or rate search results using a numerical scale. Vivisimo says the subsequent insight into the usefulness of information can be used to adjust relevancy of results in real time, benefiting everyone else in the organization, or can be used to convey feedback to others. The new version empowers users to tag search results with keywords, providing a more efficient and faster search experience, claims Vivisimo.

The company further explains that allowing users to vote on, rate, tag, save and share content within the search interface is just the first step in creating a collaborative, information-enriching environment. Velocity 6.0 allows users to add their own knowledge about information found via search directly into the search result itself in the form of free-text annotation. Rather than sending an e-mail with a file attachment to colleagues with commentary about a document, users can have a dialogue about content right within the search interface. And social bookmarking within Velocity 6.0 allows users to save search results into virtual folders for future reference to use or share with others, such as a project team.

Another contribution to the social networking in Velocity 6.0 is support for expertise location. Profiles of colleagues are developed based on data from different repositories and are displayed in a single view as a mash-up application of pictures, contact information, biographical data and recent tagging activity. Velocity 6.0 also provides a visual map or executive dashboard of hot topics within groups, departments or across the entire enterprise, based on information that has been tagged, saved or shared, providing a window into the collective intelligence of the organization.