• by Shankar Gupta , April 18, 2006

MSN is developing a "social search" tool, which will allow users to send questions to their social networks, or to the Web at large, and receive answers in return, an MSN spokesman confirmed Monday.

The spokesman said the product would be linked to other Microsoft social networks, like Messenger. The initiative was first reported late last week in Business Week, which also reported that the portal is in talks to buy social network search firm Eurekster.com to power the feature.

The product appears designed to help MSN compete with Google and Yahoo, the market leaders in search. As of the end of February, MSN accounted for 13.5 percent of searches, while Google garnered 42.3 percent and Yahoo was responsible for 27.6 percent, according to comScore Networks.

Both Google and Yahoo! have somewhat similar "answers" tools, both in beta, which allow users to ask questions into the ether, but those products don't specifically incorporate social networking. Google's product sends the questions to 500 trained researchers, who then answer the question for a fee, while Yahoo's product sends the questions out to the Web at large, and allows users to vote answers up or down. Yahoo Answers is by far the more popular product, with an audience of 3.8 million unique visitors in March 2006, compared to Google Answers' 1.4 million in the same time period, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

MSN's attempt to add in personalized answers from friends and colleagues could serve as a differentiator, said Ellen Siminoff, CEO of search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier and former Yahoo founding executive. "If Microsoft just tries to emulate Google, that's not a strategy to overtake them," she said.