Interview with Wajam CEO Martin-Luc Archambault

Wajam is an up-and-coming social search engine that was founded in March of 2009 by Martin-Luc Archambault. Mr.Archambault was formally the CEO of Zango Canada. 

Wajam allows you to search content that your friends share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and several other social networks around the Internet. The tool is easy to install and works well in most modern web browsers. 

It's All Tech was lucky enough to be able to interview Mr.Archambault, asking him about Wajam and social search in general. 

Q: In your own words, what is Wajam?

A: 

Wajam is a browser extension that shows you recommendations from your friends when you need it the most. 

For example, Wajam gives you social results from your Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Google+ circles when you:

• search on Google, Bing or Yahoo
• look for answers on Wikipedia, Ask.com
• search for a movie on IMDb
• search for travel advice using TripAdvisor
• search for a restaurant reviews on Yelp
• shop on eBay, BestBuy, Shopping.com, Walmart, Overstock

Q: How do you see Wajam changing the way we social search, or search in general, in the coming years?

A:

Wajam makes:

(1) tapping into your social circles a natural extension of your web searches.

(2) your collective intelligence portable, soon on mobile.

(3) results relevant by adding contextual relevancy by location and by profiling your friends' interests and expertise.

In the coming years, more people will have smartphones and will rely less on desktop computers for searches. At the same time, more people will use social apps and connect using social media. Our goal is to give you the knowledge of your friends in your hands, so that you can access it when and where you need it.

Instead of:

• filtering through your friends and
• calling up the ones you think would best answer your question

You get their answer immediately with Wajam.

Today, people use apps like TripAdvisor for travel advice, Yelp for restaurant reviews and Amazon to shop on the fly. We add the social layer to all these popular services so that you can find both curated content and your friends' point of view.

Q: For our readers, how would you define "social search?"

A:

Social search is the act of searching information shared by your friends. It's the convergence of search and social media. Social search lets you to tap into your collective intelligence —what we like to call social IQ— in order to answer a question or solve a problem.

Q: How are you using social media to change the way we interact with search engines?

A:

Search engines give you results based on a proprietary algorithm that ranks websites objectively. While this works for certain types of searches, there are many occasions where your friend would give you a better subjective answer. Examples: when you shop, when you are choosing a restaurant, when you travel.

This is where Wajam comes in. We make social search a natural extension of search engines— you don't have to change your habits, you simply find results from your friends in places where you already search.

We give you results from your friends and we'll match keywords from their profiles to show you which ones have interest/expertise relevant to your search.

Q: Development wise, how are you planning to expand Wajam? 

A:

• We're improving the relevance of search results by adding contextual filters like location and profile interest.
• We are working on a better search algorithm and implementing better machine learning with social signals and semantics that improves the results on the fly.
• The goal is that if somebody searches for a “restaurant”, we automatically know from his social profile that he is probably looking for “Japanese restaurant in San Francisco for the tech crowd that is not too expensive”. It's obviously very hard to do and is still not perfect, but for now it's a really good start and we are starting to test this project in production with a few beta users.
• We're improving the user experience so that the average non-technical person can quickly understand what we do.
• We're working on mobile and the best way to bring Wajam to your phone, so that you can truly access results everywhere. 

Our goal is to make Wajam an indispensable part of your search experience.

Q: How can social search change the way we interact with our friends online?

A:

Social search encourages you to share more complete status updates when you share links with your friends. By adding keywords, you help identify content so that it's more easily shared and found by your friends.

Social search also encourages you to talk about your favorite products, your interests and knowledge. This way, you let your friends know what you're good at and you add to your collective pool of knowledge/ social IQ.

By sharing great content, you make your circle of friends smarter!

Q: How do you keep users' privacy when using Wajam?

A: 

Wajam never tracks, saves or shares your browsing history or search history. We're certified by VeriSign and TRUSTe. We use industry standard HTTPS for encryption and also do not store your passwords. Full privacy policy here: http://www.wajam.com/privacy_policy.php.

Q: Essentially, how does Wajam work (setup wise, displaying results)? 

A: 

• Getting started takes about 60 seconds
• You simply sign up with your Facebook, Twitter or Google account.
• Once connected, we start collecting the links, photos and other content from your friends and store them for you. This makes up what we call your “collective knowledge”. We have over 600 million items stored so far from Wajam users.
• The next time you search the web, we show you results and recommendations from your friends directly in your favourite search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo.
• A notification also appears on popular sites showing you relevant search results.

Q: What are some real-world examples of how Wajam can help people?

A: 

AMAZON: While searching for Canon products on Amazon, I can see what friends have said about the brand.

In this screenshot, I see Facebook photos that were taken with a Canon— this allows me to judge the quality of the images. I also see an endorsement for the Canon S90 by my friend Arthur, so I know that I can ask Arthur what his thoughts are on his camera: http://blog.wajam.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/wajam-canon-amazon.png

TRIPADVISOR: While planning a trip to New Orleans and browsing reviews on TripAdvisor, I find a coffee shop recommendation from a friend on Twitter. I didn't know this friend had been to New Orleans, and now I can call her up and ask her for more advice.

Screenshot: http://blog.wajam.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/wajam-tripadvisor-neworleans.png

WIKIPEDIA: While reading the Wikipedia article on Amy Winehouse, I discover a BBC article shared by Ryan Kim, reporter at the BBC, on Google+. I also see that Pete Cashmore @Mashable shared a link to the Daily Mail article.

Screenshot: http://blog.wajam.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Wikipedia-Amy-Winehouse.png 

GOOGLE: While searching for dance shoes on Google, I see what my friends have purchased recently, and if they like what they bought. I can also view dance shoe photos from Facebook. Screenshot: http://blog.wajam.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Screen-shot-2011-08-18-at-4.35.35-PM.png

BING: While searching for "apple" on Bing, I can see the latest news about Apple the company, as well as an apple tree picture taken on Facebook by my friend Nate in Vermont: http://blog.wajam.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Screen-shot-2011-08-18-at-4.49.21-PM.png 

Q: Is Wajam planning to make a move to mobile social search?

A:

Yes, we're launching a mobile app soon!

Q: What search engines does Wajam support? 

A: 

Wajam works in searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, Blekko, Mahalo and we also show results via a toolbar notification on Wikipedia, Ask, TripAdvisor, Yelp, IMDb, eBay, BestBuy, Walmart, Shopping.com and Overstock.com.

Editor Note: This interview is the first part of a two-part editorial regarding Wajam. The second part is coming soon.