Lijit is a startup from Louisville, Colorado which was founded in June 2006. It is a search engine focusing on search through users’ own personal network. At first this sounds a little bit strange - at least it did to me - but it makes sense the moment you decide to test it.
So how does Lijit work? It acts on the assumption that people rather ask friends, family, and other trusted individuals and organisations for advice than any other people. Translating this assumption to internet search means people will preferably search their friends’ network for good information instead of a search engine like Google and Yahoo where they have to deal with spam and unrelated search results.
Though before people are able to benefit from your network you have to build it first. When signing up you enter your blog’s URL. Lijit will aggregate the links from your blogroll and add them to your profile. Also you can add your profiles from various social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr,… to your Lijit profile. Basically any RSS feed works. Now you can create a widget which can be put on your blog - see the one in the sidebar of this blog - and other people can search you and your network.
Lijit is easy to set up and seems to be a decent alternative to regular search engines if you want to find information that matters. Though the problem I see is how will people find my Lijit network, their Informer? If they know my blog and see the widget it won’t be a problem. But if they don’t there is no way people are able to find me. At least I have not spotted any.
Lijit should allow people who are not signed in to the service to search for informers. The company could profit from ads as well then. At the moment there are no ads at all.
I like Lijit. It’s a new twist to search or even more specifically to social search. Though it has to be more clear how it works right from the start. Not easy to see through at first.
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Hi Carsten,
Thanks for your review. Yeah, that’s it exactly! As one our programmers put it, “It’s as if he jacked straight into our brains!”
You’re right that it needs to be easier to find other users with search boxes, and we’re working on a suggestion engine that will do just that. So if someone searches you about “music”, it can recommend other Lijit search engines that are often searched about that. (And as always, giving preference to people from *your* network.)
We have a new release going out on Tuesday night…look for a much improved management interface!
(Cool to see you’re in Frankfurt. Did you know Lijit began as my master’s thesis at the Univerity of Osnabruek?)
-stan
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Hey Stan,
I didn’t know you were studying in Osnabrueck. Not many US students are studying in Germany. Usually it’s the other way around.
I am looking forward to the new release. Lijit is certainly a very interesting concept that might appeal to many people.Carsten
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That sounds indeed pretty interesting. Gonna check it out later.
Though on a quick thought: wouldn’t it make more sense to speak of ‘experts and friends’ instead of just ‘friends’? I sure am going to add strangers from social bookmarking services I’ve never met but consider being experts on their fields -
You are right, Marcel. For example I have added your blog to my network, simply because 1) you write great blog posts and 2) you are a regular commentator on this blog.
On the other hand I have deleted most of the blogs which were added automatically from my blog roll.Actually I think Lijit can be utilised in very different ways: building a network of experts like you have mentioned or leveraging a very personal network to find a doctor your friends trust or to get information on a local school. Have a look at the About page on Lijit.
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