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Some of the best inventions are ideas that evolve from the original brainstorm. In the past, Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves…what did they do with Jeeves by the way?) came up with the idea of a search engine that would let you ask a question. It stripped all the words out that were irrelevant and returned results of static pages that had your answer.
Aardvark (found at vark.com) is taking this one step further. They send out your question via social networks. They try to find the most appropriate answers and send them to you. The only drawback is they send them to you via IM. I don’t know about you, but my Yahoo! Messenger account hasn’t gained much use in the last year or so. Plus, you have to wait for an answer. Its like letting others do the research for you.
It will be interesting to see if it catches on, how successful the feedback is, and if people are willing to wait for answers in a world of instant gratification.
UPDATE: I found Aardvark difficult to get a response from. It doesn’t really let you know easily. It would be better if it emailed you the answer. Also, Google recently bought Aardvark, so it will be interesting to see how the Goliath handles making it better.
Search Engines