A few days before Christmas, Microsoft’s MSN Search team announced [1] their MSN Search Wiki [2]. The word quickly spread to blogs like ResearchBuzz [3], SearchEngineWatch Blog [4], and Google Blogoscoped [5]. Of the major search engines, MSN Search is the only one to employ wikis as a way to encourage customer participation in the product development process. Hats off to Microsoft for showing such leadership!
A wiki, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is essentially an interactive website that any visitor can edit, with a view to improving or enhancing it. In other words, a “website run by the community.” It’s not uncommon for entire websites to be built by web visitors. A great example is the Wikipedia [6], an entire encyclopedia written by and maintained by its online visitors.
I’ve just made some contributions to MSN Search’s wiki, including:
- A feature comparison chart [7] between MSN Search, Google, and Yahoo!
- Several recommendations for feature enhancements [8]
Come on everyone, join in and help Microsoft make a killer search engine!