Oreilly has an interesting article about the future of search engines...

It was prompted by the annual report by Aardvark, which is a pretty cool little startup. It's similar to Google Answers and Yahoo Answers, where you can ask any question and it will get you an answer. Sounds simple enough, but the devil's in the details. One thing that impresses me about Aardvark is that they really seem to "get it" when it comes to social search: people aren't looking for THE answer, they are looking for AN answer. They call this the "village" model, as opposed to the "library" model preferred by Google.

Aardvark uses your profile to learn a few things about you: where you live, interests, hobbies, etc., and then tries to find a similar person in their network to answer your question. It also connects with Facebook to figure out a few more things about you... who your friends are, what they like. Essentially, what your "villiage" is. Once it figures out what virtual village to put you in, it forwards your question to somebody likely to answer. If you ask a question about cameras, it forwards your question to some local camera experts who have been helpful in the past.

Sweet...

I'm impressed with the technology in general... also the participation rates are amazing. About 88% of questions sent to Aardvark got answered, and 75% of people who asked a question also answered one. Most interesting, is how mobile users were the ones asking the most questions. Sure, if they were sitting at their computer, the might fire up Google, or an IM client, or dig through their email archives... but despite all attempts to make them usable, mobile devices are still terrible at user input. Also, the

When you're out and about, and want to know where the best place to park is, how would you find that out?

If you have a smart phone, You could Google around to find a forum about the best parking spots in your specific city. Then scour through the archives, and find your specific location... or you could just send a text message to Aardvak, and hope somebody answers.

Most enterprises probably would not need something like this... they would probably be better served with a dedicated "help desk" support staff to keep track of common questions and who knows what. However, I could see this being huge for the general public. It could potentially be the revenue stream that Facebook or Twitter have been waiting for. Or, it could be gobbled up by Google as a pre-emptive strike.

I'm just waiting for the bidding wars to begin...