{"id":307613,"date":"2007-05-15T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2007-05-16T00:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=307613"},"modified":"2016-10-18T23:10:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T06:10:14","slug":"web-search-little-help-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/web-search-little-help-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Search\u2014With a Little Help from Your Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

Who knows you better than anybody?<\/p>\n

Your friends and family, of course.<\/p>\n

Who is best-positioned to understand your wants and needs?<\/p>\n

Your closest acquaintances, naturally.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t it make sense, therefore, to take the opinions of your dearest companions into account when attempting a Web search?<\/p>\n

If you agree, count Dahlia Malkhi, Lidong Zhou<\/a>, and Coby Fernandess among your friends.<\/p>\n

Malkhi and Zhou, from Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, are working on a research project called Nocturnal that aims to use an established online community to provide a mechanism for giving reviews and recommendations from your social circle a higher priority when you search the Web. They received invaluable assistance from former Microsoft Research intern Fernandess, the main system architect and developer on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cNocturnal,\u201d explains Malkhi, a senior researcher at the Silicon Valley lab, \u201cis a collaborative, personalized Web-search tool built of two essentially independent components. One is a generic infrastructure for sharing information in a very large network, built over the Windows Live\u2122 Messenger (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> network structure. The idea is to propagate information among social contacts using existing instant-messaging infrastructure. You could use this for sharing any type of information: pictures, files, history\u2014whatever.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second component is an enhanced Web-search tool. We have our own Internet Explorer<\/a>\u00ae toolbar that you can search the Web through. It retrieves information from Live Search (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> but reorganizes it and sorts it based on information that you\u2019ve shared about recommendations about Web sites with your Messenger contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, Nocturnal lets users tag pages with keywords. When a user searches the Web, Nocturnal retrieves pages visited by the user\u2019s social community based on a match between the search keyword and tags, complementing the reorganized Live Search results.<\/p>\n

This combination, using one of the largest social networks extant, that of Windows Live Messenger, can provide improved, personally relevant Internet search results.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a general search engine, you get rankings that are not customized to your needs,\u201d says Zhou, a researcher with Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. \u201cYou might look for particular Web pages on particular topics. It\u2019s likely that your friends or your friends\u2019 friends share common interests with you, so the pages they like are likely to be more interesting to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, as he indicates, Nocturnal enables users to select the size of the social circle with which information and recommendations are shared. It can be limited to one\u2019s set of friends, as determined by the people on your Messenger buddy list. It can be your friends\u2019 friends: everybody on the buddy lists of the people on your buddy lists. It can be extended to your friends\u2019 friends\u2019 friends and so on. The user chooses the number of \u201chops\u201d to utilize.<\/p>\n

The project got started in the summer of 2005. Fernandess was responsible for most of the implementation of the prototype, and his many nightly hours spent debugging the technology led directly to the project\u2019s name. He worked as a project consultant during the 2005-\u201906 academic year and returned to the lab for a second internship last winter.<\/p>\n

Fellow Microsoft Research Silicon Valley researcher Udi Wieder and Fabian Kuhn, a former postdoctoral researcher at the lab, also helped bring the project to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cNocturnal,\u201d Malkhi says, \u201cis a culmination of two visions. One is that there is a shift in the way users use the Internet today. You see much more powerful workstations on people\u2019s desktops. They\u2019re persistent, they\u2019re online all the time, and they\u2019re not only consuming information or using information, they\u2019re also servicing other users and collaborating and exchanging information. They\u2019re putting out stuff, not just consuming stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cNocturnal is a manifestation of this completely decentralized system that doesn\u2019t employ any centralized servers, doesn\u2019t store anything on a persistent, centralized server. It uses the power of users at the end points to share and collaborate. It is, essentially, a cost-free operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that regard, the system is similar to peer-to-peer networks, in that the computing work is performed by the PCs at the edge of the network. But then there\u2019s the other vision upon which Nocturnal relies.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is talking about the power of social networks, the power of social communities, the power of experts,\u201d Malkhi says. \u201cBut there is a real difficulty in bootstrapping these communities or these expert sites. It\u2019s very difficult to elicit information from users about their preferences, to get them to subscribe to the particular service that you want, to initiate such services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unless, of course, you can utilize an already robust, existing service, such as Windows Live Messenger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw that there is a very large social network out there that\u2019s not being utilized for anything other than instant communication,\u201d she continues. \u201cWe put these two very powerful trends together in our own research and figured that this should be able to tremendously enhance your search experience. You\u2019ll be able to filter out all junk, all spam, all intruders, and just use the information that we can pull together in a personalized, completely decentralized manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a personalized search experience, fostered by the social relationships existing within a collection of friends, that provides better results amid an environment of trust and improved privacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea,\u201d Zhou says, \u201cis to get this kind of personalization into the search experience. We believe that\u2019s a very powerful paradigm. We believe it\u2019s what the next generation of search engines should be doing. It\u2019s hard to support such functionalities in a traditional and centralized way. But the paradigm fits naturally with a decentralized social network.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother important issue is trust and privacy on the Internet. Anything you do ultimately has the issue of whether you trust the source of information and whether you want to share information with strangers. We believe a social network achieves a delicate balance between trust and privacy, because you tend to trust your friends and you are willing or inclined to share information with your friends. In Nocturnal, we also let users control what information they disclose to their friends and how far such information is propagated in the social network.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Malkhi: \u201cIt\u2019s the digital analog of what you do in your daily life. You want to buy a bicycle\u2014how do you know which store to use? You ask your neighbor. Even if they just moved to your street, their recommendation carries a lot of weight, because it comes incentive-free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people, when they hear about the concept behind Nocturnal, immediately wonder about putting the gathered information on a centralized server.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody raises the question,\u201d Malkhi stipulates. \u201cWhy not do everything centralized? Why not just ship all the data to a central server, and we can do everything better and easier there?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of a barrier. As soon as you centralize things, you globalize them, and you lose the individual point of view. We have the personalized, individualized point of view that you can emulate centrally for each user, but you might as well do it at the end point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other big issue is security. As soon as you centralize any service, you become a honey pot for spammers, and there\u2019s no way to distinguish the good from the bad. With a social network, that\u2019s exactly where you have more control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of a social network self-select for people they trust. Malevolent forces need not apply, and Nocturnal benefits.<\/p>\n

The technology offers other functionality that could prove invaluable. Users can rate Web pages and share the ratings with their friends. The friends then can determine how much to value the ratings they receive.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuppose I have a lot of common interests with Dahlia,\u201d Zhou says. \u201cThis will be reflected in the high weights we assign to ratings from each other. And when I browse the Web and I like some page, I can rate that page\u2014say, give it five stars or four stars. All those numbers will eventually influence how the search results are ordered and how they are presented to me and my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Users also can tag information in any way they desire, including by how many hops away it originated. Information and grades can be shared, but the relative weight they receive is completely under the user\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody,\u201d Malkhi says, \u201chas their own personalized view of that information. Even though we share a lot in common, no two users have exactly the same data in their files. Information that came from three hops away from me may be four hops away from you, because you got it through me and you may place less trust in it, or more trust in it, depending on your preferences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nocturnal is fully operational on Windows\u00ae XP and Windows Vista\u2122 and has been installed internally for testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking for someone in the company to seize Nocturnal,\u201d Malkhi says, \u201cand incorporate it as the means for pushing Web-search functionality to the edges of the network.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept behind Nocturnal remains alluring.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can,\u201d Zhou states, \u201cfind more relevant information than you can find otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malkhi agrees\u2014and cites additional benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no hassle,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to do anything. You don\u2019t need to subscribe to anything new. It helps protect your privacy, and it\u2019s absolutely effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trust, discretion, and support\u2014hmm, aren\u2019t those what friends are for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Who knows you better than anybody? Your friends and family, of course. Who is best-positioned to understand your wants and needs? Your closest acquaintances, naturally. Doesn\u2019t it make sense, therefore, to take the opinions of your dearest companions into account when attempting a Web search? If you agree, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194460],"tags":[202077,215627,215621,212258,215630,186439,215624],"research-area":[13555],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-307613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-search-and-information-retrieval","tag-internet-explorer","tag-live-search","tag-nocturnal","tag-online-community","tag-social-circle","tag-web-search","tag-windows-live-messenger","msr-research-area-search-information-retrieval","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"May 15, 2007","formattedExcerpt":"By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Who knows you better than anybody? Your friends and family, of course. Who is best-positioned to understand your wants and needs? Your closest acquaintances, naturally. Doesn\u2019t it make sense, therefore, to take the opinions of your dearest companions…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308663,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307613\/revisions\/308663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=307613"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=307613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}