Threadwatch points out an interesting hire that may hint at future directions for Yahoo’s search engine. Yahoo have hired  a database guru, Raghu Ramakrishnan, to analyse social search patterns:

“At Yahoo you have this unique opportunity to integrate conventional search with Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Mail,” Ramakrishnan said, listing Yahoo’s services that center on human contributions. “How do you take all this search activity and learn from it?”

“Social search — a broad effort to enhance computerized Web- search tools with insights gained from mining the collective knowledge of its users — is the linchpin of Yahoo’s strategy to compete with rival Google Inc., which has focused heavily on advances in computerized search.”

Algo vs social: which delivers more relevancy?