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Monday, December 18

Decipho - New Social Search Engine Powered by Ask.com

A new social search engine has launched called Decipho. Running on the Ask.com API, Decipho is the newest in a range of search engines emerging in the wake of the social web revolution.

For some time, questions have been asked of the traditional algorithm based search provided by the likes of Google and Yahoo! I, like many industry types, believe that social reviews/opinions will be a part of the next incarnation of the search process.

In a Q&A on SearchEngineLowdown, Decipho creator Steven Wakita shared his vision for the new search engine back in Oct 2006:

"The overall vision of Decipho is to make it easier to filter search results. I wanted it to be possible to do a search and automatically know what the content is about for that particular website without viewing it.

The key to making this work was by having enough information about the voting patterns for a particular website so that our users can make the best decision of whether they want to view the site or not. This is why I think the Search Analysis link is so important because it will allow our users to see what other keywords this website was categorized for by our users and break it down in percentages."

Now that Decipho has launched, here's a summary of some its key features:

The results are filtered based on user preferences and sorted into categories. As users can choose their own categories, these are then stored for future searches by other users. As in all social apps, the knowledge base grows over time.
Decipho also offers a "My Results" section which displays listings for your search that have you have ranked in previous searches, irrespective of their rank in the current search.
The social meter allows you to further narrow your search by specifying what level (%) a websites user ranking needs to be for a particular category.
Claim your site. This function allows website owners to provide their own description of the website which is available for viewing via a link adjacent to the listing.

While the database still has some growing necessary for it to fully deliver on owner Steven's vision, it offers some good ideas and further pushes the search world closer to the social sphere.

According to Steven's comments on TechAddress: "Decipho is self-funded. We are currently not looking to raise money because we currently don't need it. I'm 24 years old; I don't need a bloated salary because all I know is being poor."

Full credit to Steve and his team for these purest beliefs and ideals, but I am sure they will reconsider if the likes of Google present them with a reasonable offer.

4 Comments

At 1:37 AM, Steve said...: Thanks for the post and the feedback about Decipho. We are trying hard to really create a better social search experience for users.

Steve
At 8:55 AM, Anonymous said...: Hey Steve,
I highly recommend you fix the image on your homepage. The quality is so bad that I can hardly read the text. The image I'm referring to is at http://static.flickr.com/137/327343317_6fe7fdaec2_o.jpg.
Best regards and good luck!
At 8:13 PM, Anonymous said...: Decipho is taking an approach that is most similar to Eurekster and Rollyo in that it requires alot of heavy lifting on the part of users to begin to meaningfully impact the quality of results. We're taking a different approach at Searchles that is a more natural extension of websurfing. As you discover content relevant to your interests, by bookmarking and tagging it and assigning it to groups, you're creating your own vertical topical search engines on the fly or an "institutional knowledge base." Searchles will also suggest related users and groups who share your interests and all of the information within the site can be searched based on criteria you specify - everywhere - your own posts - trusted peers - the network of your trusted peers - the entire site - etc. etc. We believe there are limits to the "wisdom of masses" approach and provide users with better tools for connecting with trusted peers and trusted content.
At 10:52 PM, FPNet said...: Just wanted to find information about www.featurepics.com and typed "featurepics"

(http://www.decipho.com/search?t=0&q=featurepics)

The result:
The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

Hope it is a temporary problem.
Today is Dec, 29. Will check again in January.