The richest part of social networking lies in the wisdom of crowds. People who sharing their thoughts about holiday destinations, upcomming events, and their perspectives on interesting items make those things more interesting for others. If you know what you're doing, you can shape that information into a form that laces into search space. Yahoo! hopes to accomplish this feat with Panama.
With Panama, Yahoo starts more than a lap behind Google in the paid search space. But Panama, along with Yahoo's social networking technology, could deliver results that are relevant to things people have already found. John Battelle, author of The Search, calls search requests "the database of intentions." From my seat, it appears that Yahoo could start placing the ultimate search database at the hands of the creators of some of most shared experiences on the internet.
Owen Thomas -- "Yahoo, Flickr, and the Future of Ads"
