Google Aardvark purchase has expert finder potential

While everyone was off discussing Google Buzz [1] last week, Google made a potentially interesting purchase when it scooped up the social search tool, Aardvark [2].

One thing that has always been difficult inside any company is finding the right expert to help you out. Even if the company isn't huge, it's not always easy to know what people know. If you could tap into existing expertise inside your organization, it could potentially save you time and money. That's why I found Google's purchase of Aardvark so intriguing.

The idea behind Aardvark is to use it as a social expert finding tool. Aardvark looks at your list of Facebook or Google friends and based on that information, tries to find someone who has the expertise to answer your questions. Google's Marrissa Meyer, in discussing the company's long-term strategy recently has said, that this is one area they want to tap, the ability to search among your friends to find the best answer. Sometimes the crowd knows more than a given website could tell you.

But if you take this same kind of technology and you apply it internally inside the enterprise, you could have the start of a decent enterprise-class expert finder tool. Instead of tapping into Facebook, maybe the tool taps into Sharepoint, Jive or Telligent and looks at user profiles to find the right expert to answer your question or start a team for a given project.

It's still very early in the development of this technology, but as it continues to evolve, it should be interesting to see if Google decides to use this tool as a consumer tool or an enterprise one. As with the rest of its social platform, it's not always clear what direction it will take.

For more information:
- see the Official Google Blog post [3] announcing the purchase

Related Articles:
Google plans search interface overhaul [4]
Traction teams with Attivio for secure social search [5]
Coveo releases free enterprise search tool [6]