Google+Facebook: A Social-Network-Optimized Web Search Approach

Social search and social network are both prevalent approaches for people seeking information on the Web. Existing work generally addresses issues of the two approaches in an isolated way. In this paper, we introduce a method for incorporating social network in social search processes. Our method integrates social networking into a novel epistemology-based social search framework, where users in a social search community contribute epistemologies that include all information derived from their search processes, and forms and utilizes social networks from their search activities to improve the social search experience. We designed and developed a prototype system in which the proposed approach is implemented. We also conducted experiments to validate this approach. The results show that the social-network-optimized social search system outperforms a conventional search engine.