Kikin Personalizes Search By Tapping Into Your Social Graph
Kikin looks promising due to the fact that it sits on top of search engines you already use (google, bing, yahoo). However, I still feel as if there's something missing in this realm. I'm not yet convinced about the value of real-time search, as well as social search (what your friends are saying). I've used kikin for a couple days, but decided to axe it. The slight slowdown and chunkiness are not worth seeing a bunch of chinese tweet spam.
Additionally, I found something interesting regarding their terms and conditions:
"In addition, the kikin Plugin Software may modify the layout and order of presentation of such search results and may replace a search result returned by such Internet search engines with the same or substantially the same search result content displayed by the kikin Plugin Software."
So, essentially Kikin can replace any search result on google with their own result, or sponsored result? Sneaky way to monetize...
"You also acknowledge and agree that by using the kikin Plugin Software, additional content may be displayed to you on a web page that you visist. kikinmay modify the layout of the web page to accommodate this additional content."
So, they can edit Amazon.com to display on their content and sponsored product? The possibilities are endless...
Bottom line: cool technology, not a long-term option, a bit scary in terms of the power they have