In marketing the power of the weak tie is astronomical. If you ask a large cross section of society "Who found a job through a weak friend?" the percentage will be exceptionally high. Our friends typically share much of our environment and lifestyle. People who are friends of a friend live in a totally different world and know realities which are completely foreign to us.
Friendster is a free dating and social interaction network which opperates using this idea. Reports have stated that Google wanted to buy them last year for $30 million, but they did not sell.
Google organizes the web based on the social structure of the linking of the entire web. Newer technologies are allowing them to better find local clusters, but The Bost Globe reports that today a new competitor will take this field using the direct route.
For Eurekster to be effective features such as categorizing friends and settings such as trust friends of friends a certain number of levels deep will be necissary. Eurekster works by allowing you to cast a silent vote for a site based on the time you visit the site. Read the official Eurkester about us and Eurkester how it works information.
They hope to get you to download their toolbar and to tell friends about Eurkester via email. Two things which I believe to be errors in spreading this message are that the name of the search engine is hard for me to remember, and that they have a somewhat cluttered home page when compared with the current major search engines.
