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Funeral Home Plans a Social Network

posted on October 19, 2007


Ok, this post has nothing to do with funeral homes, but I bet the headline made you go “huh?”

That’s the reaction I had when reading news that natural language search engine Hakia will launch a new social network next week.

…called “Meet Others.” It will give you the option, from a search results page, to jump to a page on the service where everyone who searches for the topic can communicate.

Why? All I’ve heard over the past few years is how searchers are scared of sharing their search data with the search engines and the rest of the world. Now Hakia wants us to share our search for “how to rob an ATM” with others?

I knew it wasn’t far off, but it’s arrived sooner than I thought. What has? The social networking insanity that has everyone believing just because MySpace and Facebook are hot property, every site needs a social network.

Seriously, I don’t even want Google tracking my search history, let alone Hakia sharing it with a complete stranger!

What do you think? Would you use Hakia’s service? Any other examples of sites that really shouldn’t touch social networks? Or, maybe you do know of a funeral home that has a social network. ;-)

UPDATE: Added emphasis and corrected a small typo. Seems it wasn’t clear the service is “opt-in.” Hakia also added this…

This is how it works: You ask a query “how to rob an ATM” and will receive your hakia search results. You will also see an icon on the top of search results that says Meet Others who asked the same query. If you click on the button, you fall into a room (if the room exists) of people who have 1) asked the same or similar query; 2) decided to post a message to the room. They can do so by posting the message and clicking on the authentication link they will receive to confirm the posting- just like in Craigslist. It is a voluntary act and the participant decides how to be contacted: via email (which is masked); IM (Skype of MSN).


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  • Jordan McCollum

    Fascinating as far as the social search possibilities go—but I totally agree with you.

    I can see a few times where it would be helpful to be able to consult with others in a search, but only if the results themselves were insufficient (so what is Hakia saying about itself?).

    Of course, I do like this idea better than taking search history from anyone I’ve ever e-mailed and presuming that I’d be interested in what they’re interested in, even on similar queries.

  • http://www.thevanblog.com Steven Bradley

    I agree. I wouldn’t want all my searches shared with everyone else. It’s an interesting concept, though.

    Great point Jordan about what Hakia is saying about it’s results.

  • http://www.adapt.com/blog Erica Forrette

    Yeah, I don’t think I’d want other people to see my history of searches either…

    About social networks for other types of sites – isn’t it pretty much already happening with Ning? Granted, when I did a quick browse of the first few pages of Ning-powered social networks, I saw mostly “interest groups” and not specific sites, but surely there are some site-specific networks and hidden inappropriate ones (I don’t have time to look though!)

  • http://blog.hakia.com Emre Sokullu

    Dear Andy,

    Greetings from hakia.com! You have a catchy title indeed.

    We would like to make a few corrections to the product description:

    1) Meet Others is an opt-in service.

    This is how it works: You ask a query “how to rob an ATM” and will receive your hakia search results. You will also see an icon on the top of search results that says Meet Others who asked the same query. If you click on the button, you fall into a room (if the room exists) of people who have 1) asked the same or similar query; 2) decided to post a message to the room. They can do so by posting the message and clicking on the authentication link they will receive to confirm the posting- just like in Craigslist. It is a voluntary act and the participant decides how to be contacted: via email (which is masked); IM (Skype of MSN).

    2) We take privacy very seriously. Hakia.com is the only search engine that does not insert a cookie in your computer when you do your web search!

    3) There is no registration process to use the service.

    We expect the Meet Others platform to be dynamic, transactional and informational in nature. Wouldn’t you want to meet people who are suffering from the same disease to swap stories? Or meet the ticket seller for a concert that is already out?

    Thanks for the posting!

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    @Emre – I just made a change to the post. The quote mentioned that the service is “opt in”, but I seen I had a small typo that confused everyone.

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  • http://www.connectingdirectors.com Ryan Thogmartin

    There really is a “social network” for funeral homes and funeral professionals. The web address is http://www.connectingdirectors.com

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    @Ryan – LOL, doesn’t surprise me really. ;-)

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