What it does

Slowly creeping out of stealth mode, Delver aims to change the way search engines search. Currently, search engines have no frame of reference besides the search term in question. So if a guy looking for midnight fun searches for, let’s say ‘sex’, and a 24 year old grad student doing her thesis on human anatomy puts in the same word, they’re going to have the same results, regardless of their identity or social graph. Search does not take into account social networking sites, blogs, YouTube videos, RSS feeds, or bookmarks. What Delver accomplishes, then is to personalize search—they enable searches based on your social graph which is culled from all parts of the web, from MySpace to YouTube to your mum’s blog. Delver than creates your own social graph and prioritizes the results based on the graph. The result is a search that is relevant to you. You can register if you want. This lets you authenticate profiles and sources. If you don’t register, a name and some pertinent info (ie location, email address) will suffice.

In their own words

“Delver is a socially connected search company; a next-generation web search engine - what we call a Connected Search Engine - that improves the relevancy of web search results by prioritizing these results based upon the searcher’s social network. Delver uncovers the wealth of knowledge from users’ online connections in a useful and enjoyable way.”

Why it might be a killer

Delver is unique search engine likely to pique anyone who wants a search engine relevant to them. It delivers a much needed alternative to Google’s search engine.

Some questions

What about faking someone’s identity? Delver could potentially be used for other purposes than one’s own. Conversely, will users be comfortable with a search that explores their inner lives or social graphs?

Updates


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