Todd Vernon of Lijit (covered previously) just pinged me to let me know they’ve just announced the general availability of their personal network search widget. You can see that I’m running it on the right hand side of this blog.
I’ve been Lijit for about 6 months now (according to my profile) and I’ve entered in various blog feed and identities that I have on the web, such as my LinkedIn profile and my YouTube account. Now you can use the widget to search my personal network and the networks of my trusted sources.
I’ve long thought that there’s lots of untapped power in peoples defined social and business networks that nobody is leveraging. When I’m approached by “the next myspace” I always ask them first if the power of what they are doing is in defining the social network or leveraging it. Most of these plays are really looking to leverage known relationships and influencers. However, even though this is the case I often find that they are building a social network to support it. Lijit is using a tactic that I often recommend to folks like this – leverage the existing social networks that people give you access to. That way, you don’t force them to change their behavior (and jump over to “your” social network site) but you still give them focused benefits like Lijit is doing with search.
Let me know if you think the Lijit wijit is a hit or a bunch of.. well, you know. 😉
