Demonstrating social search a la HeyStaks

For all the success of mainstream search engines there are a number of opportunities for improving on the conventional Web search user experience. In this short paper we consider the default assumption that search is solitary in nature, an isolated interaction between individual user and search engine. We highlight the value of a more collaborative approach to Web search and briefy present a novel add-on for mainstream search engines: HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com). It is designed to provide a more collaborative search experience, one in which recommendation technologies play a central role, by learning from the search experiences of groups of searchers in order to provide targeted recommendations during future search sessions.