i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/technology/personaltech/03pogue-email....

The article describes Aardvark, a new search engine that allows you to submit a question and returns an answer by finding someone who is an "expert" on your subject. Aardvark utilizes your existing social circle to find that "expert," and thus presents a spin on crowdsourcing that narrows the amount of information you receive in response to a question. This obviously makes information recall much faster. You're not spending time wading through a million Google results, clicking a link and finding out it actually has no relevance to your question. The concept behind Aardvark doesn’t seem too novel, but is another example of an attempt to solve the problem of relevant and precise information recall. The search engine boasts an average of five minutes before you get the answer you’re looking for.

It’s interesting that the whole endeavor depends on altruistic behavior; people have to want to give you a good answer. Perhaps the likelihood of altruism increases because you know you are answering someone who is (somewhere) within your social circle, rather than just someone "out there" on the Web.