MrTaggy
a social-tag based cross between a search engine and a recommendation engine for exploring topics quickly and efficiently on the web

 

WHAT: an experimental discovery engine for exploring topics quickly and efficiently on the web, it's a cross between a search engine and a recommendation engine constructed from social tagging data

WHY: to reduce the noise from social tags while amplifying the signal from them; while social tags contain useful descriptions about the content and context of a webpage (and can be used to deliver more relevant search results), they also contain a lot of noise (e.g., people often use different words to mean the same thing or the same words to mean different things)

HOW: leverages the knowledge contained in tags people have added to web pages through social bookmarking services, since social tags are like navigational signposts where people have identified the most valuable information

IMPACT: people using this have been shown to learn a topic more efficiently in user tests; social search technology can bring a whole new level of understanding to information seekers by presenting information that is not only relevant but also socially vetted