What makes for “good” real-time search?

There’s been a lot of hype around the real-time search trend and considering Worio’s role as a complementary tool to search, we’ve definitely have some thoughts about it. We shared some of these ideas in a blog post we recently wrote for TechVibes – the introduction and link to the piece can be found below. We look forward to hearing some of the thoughts you have about this trend!

The Three Pillars of Real-Time Search

With the recent announcement that both Bing and Google will be including real-time results from Twitter in their Web search results, it is increasingly evident that the need to track and monitor the current conversation on the Web is real. Now that the big players are joining the myriad of startups competing in this arena, it is worth analyzing what factors will determine the eventual victor: what makes for "good" real-time search?

Google revolutionized keyword search not by doing a better job finding keywords in documents, but by developing techniques for separating meaningful documents from low-quality and spammy ones. Similarly, the quality of real-time search will not be determined simply by how recent the results are, but instead by how well the results are filtered. The winner in the real-time search space will be the player who can deliver in three key areas: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/the-three-pillars-of-real-time-search.

Our Thoughts About Running a Startup Outside of the Valley

We wanted to share the column we wrote for VentureBeat’s Entrepreneurial Corner about running a startup outside of the Valley that ran earlier this month. So far it has experienced some good commentary and was even included in the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch. The introduction and link to the piece are below. We hope you find the information useful and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Running a startup outside of the Valley
It’s easy to feel left out if you’re a startup that’s not based in Silicon Valley.

We’ll admit to feeling the occasional sting of envy when we hear about the exciting events and opportunities taking place there from our headquarters in Vancouver, Canada. But we’ve also learned that there are some real advantages to being headquartered beyond the bubble – and that having a day-to-day presence there isn’t as important as it might seem.

Here are a few of the upsides we’ve discovered, as well as tactics for staying connected to the tech entrepreneur ‘mother ship’ while enjoying the benefits of your home base:
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/11/10/running-a-startup-outside-of-the-valley/.

Worio Tours the Valley and is Showcased at the Bing-hosted TechCrunch50 Cocktail Reception

We have had some pretty exciting experiences in the Silicon Valley in recent weeks. The first of which was a media tour that included some great face-time with many industry experts. It was nice to hear direct feedback about the product and, most of all, their positive responses!

Perhaps the highlight of our visits was experiencing the famously small ecosystem that is The Valley when we accepted an invitation from Microsoft’s Bing to host a bar alongside two other startups, SurfCanyon and Aardvark, at the official TechCrunch50 cocktail reception they were sponsoring.

It was encouraging to be a part of the event’s mutually supportive environment where startup companies, media and money people could all come together. The San Francisco Design Center, where the event took place, was buzzing with people networking, demos and entrepreneurs celebrating a successful launch they had timed to coincide with the show.

A good amount of traffic came by our way as people were drawn in by the “Whiskovery” (whiskey-based) cocktails we were serving at our Worio Bar and the cool Discovery Wheels we made so people could discover “cool stuff” to do in San Francisco. We also found ourselves presenting the demo practically on loop! At the end of the night we had made some interesting connections with media, other startup companies and prospective investors. We especially enjoyed talking with DotSpots and meeting with the Powerset guys to see how the company has evolved since being acquired by Microsoft.

And, since we’re all about discovery, see the recipe for the “Whiskovery” cocktail below. It’s pretty good stuff based on the number of times we saw the same faces come back to the bar for thirds or fourths!

The Whiskcovery
Ingredients:
2 oz St. George Single Malt Whiskey
1 oz Aqua Perfecta Poire Liqueur
1/2 oz Cran-apple juice
1/4 oz Ginger simple syrup
1/4 oz Fresh lemon juice
2 Mint leaves

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice, shake and strain into a martini glass. Sprinkle a couple of torn mint leaves on top to complete.

Bottoms up!

Follow us on Twitter!

We’re happy to share that we’ve started a Twitter account for Worio where we’ll be tweeting company news, discoveries around social media and the semantic Web, and having conversations with you - our valued users. You can follow us here. We look forward to getting to know Worio fans on Twitter and hearing your feedback, questions and overall thoughts on the service.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s a fun conversation tool on the Web that allows you to share short updates with friends. You can give it a try by signing up for an account and once you’re logged in, go to our profile to follow us. Or, if you’d rather not join Twitter but want to be kept up-to-date on what Worio’s doing, you can just subscribe to our Twitter RSS feed.

See you on the tweet side!

The Worio Team

Welcome Worio to the blogosphere!

Welcome to the Worio blog. Whether you’re a newcomer to the site or a longtime fan, we’re happy to have you on board. Come here to find general product and company news, upcoming events we’ll be attending and other campaigns we’re working on you may be interested in.

If you’re new to Worio, it’s a discovery engine working alongside your preferred search provider – whether that’s Google, Bing or Yahoo – to recommend information that’s interesting to you. That way, you get not only what you searched for but also discover what you’ve been missing. Worio unobtrusively learns about you as you search and interact with your network of friends, personalizing discoveries to your tastes so you get information that interests you. Here are a few of the benefits you get by using Worio:

• By exploring the Web for information that is related but not specific to your search queries, Worio answers the questions you wish you’d thought to ask.
• Through Worio’s social bookmarking system, you can catalogue your discoveries for future reference and to share with friends on the Worio site and Facebook. You can even sync or import your Delicious library to Worio. That way you’ll be able to search the full text of anything you tag on Delicious on Worio.
• You can use Facebook Connect to share your Worio discoveries directly with friends. You can also download our Facebook application to get tailored discoveries pushed right to your news feed.

Give Worio a try and let us know what you think! We can’t wait to hear about all the cool new content you discover.