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It's that time of year again when we look back at what was 2008 through the billions of search queries we receive each month and from the millions of users who help paint this picture. This year we've teamed up with Yahoo! Buzz to bring to you the Yahoo! 2008 Year in Review. Not only are we presenting the top ten searches, we are also including overall themes and popular trends that bubbled to the surface , including the economy, politicians, news stories, Olympians, rising celebrities, influential women, and notable deaths. Searches within these themes covered the gamut, from Miley Cyrus' controversial Vanity Fair cover to the notorious pregnant man and farewell searches of Heath Ledger and Bernie Mac. Michael Phelps also pulled in the highest searches of any Olympian, while Angelina Jolie and Sarah Palin gained top positions in the influential women category. Additional "top tens" were also included in this year's review across select areas of Yahoo! such as, Yahoo! Food, Shine, Tech, Green, Shopping, Travel, Games, Movies, Mobile, Music, Local, Upcoming, Hot Jobs, most Buzzed-Up stories and clicked-on stories from yahoo.com. What a year it was! Looking over all of the top ten lists and search activity for 2008, we pulled out some interesting tidbits we thought you'd find interesting. Users were captivated by this year's historic US Presidential election, with the Olympic triumphs closely following. The economic downturn was another issue that grabbed up a lot of user's attention. Of course, there was still time to enjoy a little escape by devouring celebrity gossip and delving into online video games. And despite all of the activity surrounding the 2008 Presidential elections, Britney Spears still gained the number one spot as the top searched person (7 out of 8 years). She did make some news this year with a new album, three MTV Music Awards, a sitcom guest star role and documentary on her rise. People just can't get enough of her! Barack Obama was the second most searched person in 2008 and the third most popular search term. Headlines of his election victory received more clicks than any other story on yahoo.com this year. Obama soared up the search ranks as the election campaign moved forward with consumers using search to get informed, learn more about him and decide how to vote in this critically important election. There was some debate on whether or not Britney Spears could outrank President-elect Barack Obama as the most searched term and most searched person in 2008. According to a recent Yahoo! Search survey*, most people thought Barack Obama (38 percent) would be the most searched person on the Web followed by Britney Spears (27 percent). It's not over yet, though! With one more month remaining in 2008, President Obama may still outrank his top search opponent. To find out more about the Yahoo! 2008 Year in Review, go to yearinreview.yahoo.com. Incidentally, another way to look back at 2008 is through our monthly reviews of top movers - keywords that accelerated the fastest. We skipped January (hangover, sorry), but click through to see what buzzed in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November. Stephen Rodi Yahoo! Search *Source: October 2008 survey from Yahoo! and Decipher Inc., which randomly sampled and surveyed 2,000 U.S. Internet Adults

Over the last few months we've showcased a handful of innovative mashups that developers have created using Yahoo! Search BOSS. The creations have ranged in functionality and focus, but all have included interesting applications of Yahoo! Search's index, infrastructure and technology. Today, we're sharing another useful application of BOSS that TechCrunch just launched - a technology-flavored Web search engine. This new search engine enables TechCrunch users to search for technology-focused articles and company information across both the TechCrunch network of sites and the rest of the Web. This partnership with TechCrunch illustrates a new BOSS capability called vertical lens technology, which enables partners, often with no search expertise, to create a truly comprehensive vertical search engine that complements their core user experience. Using BOSS, TechCrunch now provides a one-stop shop for all types of search. BOSS not only improves TechCrunch's standard site search, it also integrates relevant technology content on people, products and companies from across the Web. And if a user conducts a non-tech focused search, they'll see relevant Web search results. BOSS vertical lens technology provides a handful of features that were implemented on TechCrunch:

• Real-time indexing of proprietary content
- Once TechCrunch content is added or a user comment is submitted, the search index almost immediately reflects the changes.
• Customized ranking
- The BOSS and TechCrunch teams worked closely to fine-tune the ranking algorithm to fit the TechCrunch audience and user experience.
• Structured search
- BOSS supports faceted refinement around TechCrunch's structured content. This offers powerful tools for people who want to fine tune their searches or browse TechCrunch content - e.g. narrowing in on articles on Twitter written only by Michael Arrington, or only the most popular articles (popularity is determined by number of comments), or locating all companies that are founded in 2008.
• Blending Web with proprietary content in a single search display
- After querying both the TechCrunch and the Web indices, BOSS blends the results to produce one result set that is both relevant and comprehensive.

BOSS vertical lens is currently available to certain Yahoo! partners - but we're working to share the technology more openly through the BOSS API. If you are interested in building a search product using BOSS vertical lens technology, please email us here. Our partnership with TechCrunch highlights the beginning of many more BOSS partner launches as Yahoo! continues to open up its search technologies and infrastructure to the world. Take a look at TechCrunch's article for additional background and insight. Stay tuned. YaJie Ying BOSS Team

We'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. To share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board. Sharad Verma Yahoo! Search

A couple of weeks ago, Yahoo! Search visited Tel Aviv, Israel as part of our international BOSS Hack Day series. Our goal with these Hack Days is to educate developers around the world on Yahoo! Search BOSS, share where the platform is headed and foster the development of innovative new search experiences using BOSS. The BOSS team got together with 100 developers and entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv for a detailed presentation on the BOSS API, presented in Hebrew by BOSS Engineering Director Eran Palmon. After the presentation, developers had the chance to build their own mashup creations that were then reviewed by a panel of judges. We received 20+ mashups and judging is complete. Drum roll, please... The winning team, Get the Pic, wrote an addictive phrase guessing game (similar to Hang-Man), based on Yahoo! BOSS image, news and web search APIs. The ingenuity and entrepreneurship exhibited at the Hack Day in Tel Aviv was encouraging, especially as we continue to forge our relationship with developers in this region. In fact, Delver, an Israel-based social search company, recently launched its search engine powered in part by BOSS. There's no doubt that we'll continue to see new and inventive search experiences from developers there. For more details on our developer event in Tel Aviv, check out this recent post from the Yahoo! Developer Network. We've captured more photos of the event as well. Farewell for now, Tel Aviv...see you in 2009. Sophie Major YDN International & Honorary BOSS Team Member

You may have heard about our experimental visual display of search results on Yahoo! India, called Glue(TM) Pages. Tonight we're launching a similar, but slightly different experience in the U.S. with Yahoo! Glue(TM) beta. This newest iteration is a standalone experience focused on assembling useful information from all over the Web, giving users a new place to discover and explore images, videos, articles and more. We're starting with a limited set of topics (more will be added over time), pulling together content from the best places on the Web onto one Yahoo! Glue(TM) page. These pages are built using an algorithm that automatically places the most relevant modules on a page, giving you a visually rich, diverse page all about the topic in which you're interested. To see it in action, check out some of the Glue pages on some popular people, places and things: New York Giants, Henry Paulson, Electoral College, Hugh Jackman, etc. For those that may be wondering, our intention with Yahoo! Glue(TM) beta is not to replace the Yahoo! Search experience in the US. We're always challenging ourselves to explore innovative new ways to deliver great experiences. Glue is one of those experiments, with a goal of giving users one more visual way to browse and discover new things from across the Web. We'll be working to expand the number of Glue pages, improve the experience and incorporate your feedback into future versions. We'll be rolling this out over the next few hours, so go ahead and give it a try at glue.yahoo.com. We think it's pretty sticky (we had to have one "glue" pun in this post), and we'd love your feedback. Julie Demsey Yahoo! Glue Product Management

You puzzle lovers out there may remember that we launched a crossword puzzle game that combined the Search Assist feature to provide helpful hints from Yahoo! Search last Fall. After all, many of us aren't born with the natural "crossword gene" (myself included) and having a helping hand to unscramble the word simply doubles the fun. Many users told us that they really enjoyed the game and were sad when it was removed after a brief period of time. That's why we teamed up with Yahoo! Games and worked hard to create two games that are refreshed daily - Daily Crossword and Hollywood Jumble. Following the recent launch on www.yahoo.com for Internet Explorer, we are thrilled to announce that they are now live for Firefox and Safari. So take a break and give yourself a brain boost with the puzzle games powered by Yahoo! Search. Good luck and have fun. Christina Lee Yahoo! Search

Today we're pleased to announce the availability of the first of a series of new BOSS features called Key Terms. We began opening up our search infrastructure four months ago with Yahoo! Search BOSS. Since then, we've heard again and again in our developer group and at conferences and hack days around the world that developers want more access to deep infrastructure assets. Key Terms is derived from a Yahoo! Search capability we refer to internally as "Prisma." This is the same patented technology that powers Search Assist. Key Terms is an ordered terminological representation of what a document is about. The ordering of terms is based on each term's frequency and its positional and contextual heuristics. How could it be used? Obviously it could be used as the basis for assistance and refinement technology (as we've done with Search Assist), but that's hardly the only possible application. Key Terms could be highly useful as input to semantic analysis or new relevancy models. They could also be used to analyze and cluster similar documents or as a vehicle for new visual experiences. For an example of Key Terms in use check out Tartin3.com. It's a Parisian food search engine built by our very own epicurean developer Ted Drake. The "Related Terms" refiners under each result are pulled directly from Key Terms. To provide API access to Key Terms, we're introducing a new universal parameter called "view." View is the argument that will provide a lens into deeper content. Appending "&view=keyterms" to the BOSS Web Search API call will result in Key Terms being included in the response. In the example below, we included Key Terms in a query for obama. Each result contains up to 20 terms describing the document. The terms below describe the first result, for Change.gov. Check out the BOSS documentation for all the details of how you can use Key Terms and other BOSS functionality. Last but not least, we've added Romanian, Hebrew, and Turkish language/region support to the BOSS APIs - details are also included in the documentation. If you have any questions or feedback, we encourage you to post them to the BOSS group. We're committed to continuing to open our infrastructure and technology to developers, start-ups and established Internet companies, so if you have any thoughts on what should be next, we're all ears. Ashim Chhabra The BOSS Team

We just returned from two solid events on the BOSS Hack Day world tour. Last Monday's event in London drew a range of developers, including a few who were completely new to the platform along with a handful of experienced BOSS hackers (such as the developer from BuildaSearch). After a successful stop in London, the team headed to Paris to prepare for another event on Wednesday. The Paris event stood out for a couple of reasons. First, we were really pleased with the turnout. The event was held at a well-known Parisian coworking center called La Cantine, which seemed to be at the hub of the developer community in Paris... it was packed. Even more impressive was how engaged everyone was. We started with a one-hour overview and technical discussion, broke for sushi and beer and then split into two workshops -- one on the BOSS Mashup Framework and one on building niche search engines using the BOSS API. Almost all of the developers stayed until 10:30 or later that evening to learn more about BOSS and shared some excellent feedback on where we should take the product. Although neither of us speaks a lick of French, we had some great conversations. We met with the folks from Veosearch, a BOSS-powered search engine that gives a percentage of its profits to charity, as well as the guys from Iminent, an IM add-on and contextual search company. We'd like to thank all the developers who joined us. Hearing directly from you about new features you'd like to see will help us prioritize our efforts in 2009. Also, big thanks to the Yahoo! teams in London and Paris for all their help in setting up and running the events. If you weren't able to join us, we'll continue to host developer events in the coming months. In the meantime, you can check out more photos and the slides from our presentation. Graham Mudd & Vik Singh BOSS Team

With over 180 million unique URLs tagged, Delicious is celebrating its five year anniversary. To date, 5.3 million users have turned to Delicious to enhance their social search experience. Not only is it a free and easy way for people to discover, tag and share web content, it continues to evolve to provide greater value to the Delicious community through the introduction of new features, such as browser add-ons or an improved user interface. Happy anniversary, Delicious, and here's to many more. Yahoo! Search Blog Team

Las Vegas is about to get even wilder next week for the annual Pubcon Vegas 2008 show. Search and search marketing professionals are heading out to the Las Vegas Convention Center in droves and Yahoo! Search will be a part of the action. Participating in a number of panels, the team here will cover topics such as eliminating duplicate content and the current state of search. Attendees can also learn best practices for organic listings and have their sites reviewed live, at the show. Wednesday, November 12th Time: 10:15 - 11:30 a.m. (Salon B) Session: Local and Mobile Search Description: This panel will look at local search from the varying perspectives of search engines, wireless audiences and SEO/SEM marketers. Yahoo!: Shailesh Bhat, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Local Thursday, November 13th Time: 10:15 - 11:30 a.m. (Salon C) Session: Getting Rid of Duplicate Content Issues Once and For All Description: This panel will look at the top issues relating to duplicate content and will explore what can be done to alleviate and address webmaster and site owner fears. Yahoo!: Priyank Garg, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search Time: 1:30 - 2:50 p.m. (Salon F) Session: Organic Site Reviews Description: Get your Web site reviewed live by a panel of SEO experts in a session focused on organic search. Yahoo! (Moderator): Tim Mayer, VP, U.S. Search Business Time: 4:10 - 5:30 p.m. (Salon A) Session: Super Session - Search Engines and Webmasters (a.k.a. The Search Engine Smackdown) Description: Experts from four major search engines will discuss current status, features and fresh offerings from their engines. Yahoo!: Sean Suchter, VP of Engineering, Yahoo! Search For the complete line-up, check out the conference schedule and feel free to stop by if you're in Vegas. Yahoo! Search Blog Team

We often talk about the growing number of interesting SearchMonkey applications that have been built by developers. Many of the applications live in the Yahoo! Search Gallery, but quite a few aren't accepted for various reasons. Today, we're introducing SearchMonkey experimental applications to give developers a way to share their apps with early-adopting users. We think the early feedback that these users can provide will be extremely helpful for developers. This also gives users who opt-in an even wider variety of apps from which to choose. When developers submit their app to the gallery in the SearchMonkey Developer Tool, it will be reviewed by our team. The parameters for inclusion in the gallery are relatively straightforward, but often minor details such as a missing logo or a non-conditional display can keep innovative apps from reaching the gallery. Starting today, even if an app doesn't meet all of the gallery guidelines, it will still be quickly approved as an experimental app provided the basic functionality operates as designed and we don't initially see any other major issues with it. To view experimental applications, simply click on the 'Show Experimental Enhancements' link at the bottom of the application directory pages in the gallery. Once you've opted in, you can access all the experimental SearchMonkey applications and provide direct feedback as well as feature requests to the developers. You can also get automatic upgrades to the latest versions when changes are made to the applications. Let us know what interesting applications you've discovered! Nick Cox Yahoo! Search

Election Day is fast approaching and the presidential race has certainly been interesting. As the race heats up, we've been collecting and analyzing some fascinating data about how voters are using search during this election. While searches aren't votes, they do provide insight into what's on the collective mind of the electorate. Here are a few highlights: In the past week, Senator Obama has drawn more than twice as many queries as Senator McCain. That's not necessarily all positive, as the nature of the queries indicate that people still have a lot of questions -lookups range from questions about his biography to his birth certificate, from his grandmother to his gun control platform. Interestingly, last week we saw six times as many queries for Cindy McCain compared to Michelle Obama. As for who's doing all the searching, we often run geographical heat maps to track the queries by state. The map below traces the past week's searches for John McCain in each state in terms of queries per capita. As you can see, Washington, D.C. is intently following his progress, followed by Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina and Ohio. Washington, D.C., Georgia, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina have been scrutinizing Barack Obama most closely. Since the heat maps compare relative search volume among states for each candidates' name, they can't be compared to each other. So, here's a look at how the candidates stack up against each other in a few key battleground states: Whatever the outcome of the presidential race, perhaps the most encouraging news has been the surge in look-ups for information pertaining to voter registration. Patriotism may come with bureaucracy, but at least search can help with the paperwork. Remember to exercise your right to vote on November 4th and share your "Road to the White House" search experiences in the comments below. Vera Chan & Graham Mudd Yahoo! Search

Last October we launched Search Assist, taking a significant step toward making searching smarter on Yahoo! Search. Over the past year we've made strides in improving our search assistance technology with one goal in mind: to intelligently guide users to the answers they seek. In a recent survey1, we learned that 83 percent of searchers want and value assistance with their searches; and 85 percent aren't finding what they're looking for in their first search. As we look back on the year since launching Search Assist, we thought we'd share some of the developments and enhancements that have helped make it one of our most used and useful features. July 2007 - Search Suggestions Launch on Yahoo.com: We kick things off with search suggestions on Yahoo.com to give users a quicker way to get to their answers - delivering suggestions as they type. October 2007 - Search Assist Launches: Kicking things up a notch, for the first time users can get query suggestions and related concepts directly from the search results page as well as on Yahoo.com. Search Assist's smart triggering technology detects when customers have difficulty formulating a query and displays suggestions or related concepts only when they're helpful. March 08 - Search Assist goes global: Search Assist is extended to users in 15 markets and 7 languages, including: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, UK, and Vietnam. May 08 - Inquisitor joins the Yahoo! Search family: We acquire Inquisitor to further deepen our strength in assistance technology with this slick Safari browser plug-in. August 08 - Search Assist on Mobile Search Assist extends to mobile devices (Nokia) via the Yahoo! oneSearch shortcut. October 08 - Inquisitor Extends to Firefox and Internet Explorer In addition to Safari, we roll out Inquisitor across Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. On top of the visible enhancements listed above, behind the scenes we've added billions of suggestions to Search Assist, improved our understanding of the world's languages and worked to make the technology more comprehensive. Here are a few examples of what it all adds up to for our users:

1. Overall user engagement:
User engagement on Search Assist has increased by 60x post launch - thanks to improvements in suggestion quality, increased coverage and better interaction design. Simply put, Search Assist has become part of the way that users search at Yahoo!.
2. Query formulation:
Our data shows that users find Search Assist convenient and reassuring. Search Assist will check spelling of difficult terms, so instead of typing in a word like "Schwarzenegger," which is likely impossible for any non-Austrian to spell, all you have to do is enter "Arnold" and Search Assist completes it for you.
3. Reformulation and Exploration:
Usage of the "related concepts" section for Search Assist peaks when users need new ideas. We've seen a 3x jump in engagement for this feature, and we're the first and still the only search engine offering it. The beauty of this technology is that it reveals facts or connections that a user may not be aware of. For example, if you're looking for information about climate change, Search Assist lets you know that climate change is related to greenhouse gases.

Looking ahead, we'll continue to focus on improving the sophistication and usefulness of our assistance technology. Feel free to drop us your feedback and comments below. Tom Chi Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search 1. Survey conducted by Decipher, Inc. in October 2008

The BOSS team recently participated in Open Hack 2008 to promote innovation and openness in search. Developers came out in full force to create hacks and mashups using Yahoo! Search BOSS. With the success of our event in Sunnyvale, we decided to take Hack Day on the road. We're inviting developers to take part in one of our Hack Days around the world. We'll be sharing where the platform is headed, leading technical discussions and encouraging developers to start building innovative new search experiences using BOSS. Our first Hack Day kicks off in Tel Aviv on November 6th. If you're interested, sign up here. We'll be hosting or participating in Hack Days throughout November, so check out the schedule below and join us if you can:

• Sao Paulo: November 8 - 9, 2008 @ SENAC University
• London: November 10, 2008 @ Wallacespace
• Paris November 12, 2008 @ La Cantine

We'll also be hosting events in South East Asia and India in the near future, so check back here for more details on where we'll be We hope you can come hack with us! The BOSS team

Earlier this year, we launched Inquisitor 3 for Safari. Since then, users have been asking (demanding) that we make Inquisitor available on other browser platforms. This evening, we're doing just that with the launch of Inquisitor Firefox 2 and 3 and Internet Explorer 7 and 8. This means that the majority of Internet users can now access Inquisitor's fast, smart, and flexible search experience from their browser search box. The look and feel of the IE and Firefox versions bear a striking resemblance to the original Safari version, but there are some important improvements to note. Building on the work by the Yahoo! Research team in the paper "Information Re-Retrieval: Repeat Queries in Yahoo! Logs," the algorithm that generates the personalized results has been enhanced to return more targeted results. We've also included a bookmark-based retrieval feature for IE. So, if you are looking for a page you bookmarked a few months ago, say an expense report guide on your local Intranet, you won't need to fumble around your hundreds of bookmarks and folders to find that page. A simple search in Inquisitor will bring it right up. Beyond these enhancements, the focus of Inquisitor, regardless of browser platforms, remains squarely on providing you with instant web results that get you to your destination faster, the best query formulation assistance and a richer, more personalized search experience. Now you don't have to decide between your favorite browser and your favorite search experience - you can have both. Try it out on Safari, Firefox or IE and let us know what you think in the comments below. Ariel Seidman & Inquisitor Team

As we announced on October 14, Kallout, a contextual search product, won the BOSS Mashable Challenge. Part of the first prize for the Challenge was a guest post on Mashable, which was posted today. Kallout is a great example of how BOSS can quickly be integrated into products and mash-ups to power next generation search experiences - so give their article a read. The BOSS Team

A few weeks ago, the BOSS team invited a handful of the top academic minds in information retrieval to join us at our Sunnyvale campus for the BOSS Academic Research Day. In addition to the professors and grad students from Stanford, MIT, UMass, University of Illinois and Purdue, we also invited ten senior researchers from Yahoo!. We had several goals for the day: to share knowledge, exchange ideas and gather product feedback. Our researchers presented their vision for where search is headed and summarized a number of the toughest research challenges we face as a company and industry. The academics shared summaries of how they're currently using BOSS in their research as well as how they'd like to use it in the future. That's where the product feedback came in. Our academic colleagues didn't hold back when it came to sharing how we could expand and improve their access to our technology and we were glad they didn't. For example, they told us which elements of our index would be particularly helpful in conducting research and how challenging it is to conduct research without access to real query traffic. In a recent article, CNET summarized the event and why we think working with the academic community is so important. Here are a couple pics from the day - the rest are on flickr. We'd like to thank our academic partners for making the trip and sharing their perspectives - they will serve as important feedback into our roadmap for the next year. Graham Mudd BOSS Team

Today, we're happy to announce that we're turning on Citysearch and Zagat SearchMonkey applications for all users. Together with the Yelp and Yahoo! Local Enhanced Results, as well as the Yahoo! Shortcut at the top of the search page, finding local businesses on Yahoo! Search is faster and more intuitive than ever before. For example, Citysearch's app provides ratings, hours of operation, addresses and phone numbers for millions of restaurants directly on the search results page. It also includes deep links to each restaurant's profile, user-generated reviews and a map, so users can get directly to the answer they're seeking. To see the app in action, try a search for slanted door san francisco or cones new york. We've also seen the number and quality of applications in the Yahoo! Search Gallery continue to climb and improve. Here are a couple recent additions we particularly like: Take a look at the recently developed Infobar for TV.com. The app displays the next air date of a television show, user rating, summary of the show, and links to videos, photos and reviews, as well as information about the cast. Try a search for Dancing with the Stars. Chris Lindsey recently built a great Infobar for Food Network results. It displays some essential info about recipes, like cook time and level of difficulty, and includes a deep link taking users directly to a printer-friendly page. Nice work, Chris! We're pleased with all of the new apps that have been developed and we're looking forward to what new ideas and innovations the development community will come up with. If you have any ideas for apps that would improve the search experience or you've built something you want to let us know about, add a comment below. The SearchMonkey Team

The Web 3.0 Conference & Expo kicks off this week in Santa Clara and the Yahoo! Search team will be there speaking on a couple of panels about SearchMonkey and Yahoo! Search BOSS. Thursday, October 16th Time: 2:00 - 2:50 p.m. Session: Demo Hour: Semantic Search Solutions Description: This session showcases practical applications for semantic search and the benefits of semantic technologies in improving relevancy of results. In this track, Yahoo! will speak to developers' and site owners' use of structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing and drive more site traffic with SearchMonkey. Yahoo!: Tom Chi, Senior Director, Product Management, Yahoo! Search Friday, October 17th Time: 1:00 - 1:50 p.m. Session: Improved Services DEMO Session Description: This demo session showcases Web 3.0 products that have raised the bar in service delivery to users and/or customers. Yahoo! will share how BOSS is helping developers, startups and large Internet companies build their own search services and move the needle in next-generation search innovation. Yahoo!: Bill Michels, Senior Director, Open Search Platform, Yahoo! Search Check out the complete conference schedule for more sessions on next-generation web technologies. And stop by the panels and say hi. We look forward to seeing you there. Yahoo! Search Blog team

Last week, the finalists of the BOSS Mashable Challenge were announced and readers had a chance to vote for their favorites. Mashable has now announced the lucky winners. But first, here's a reminder of the finalists:

• TuneChimp - Music search
• socialmention - People/social networking search
• CopyrightSpot - Original content search
• KallOut - Selection-based search
• PopGist - Discussion/topic aggregation
• Surf Canyon - Real-time results re-ranking
• Tall Street - Web search using community voting
• iMusicMash - Social music app for iPhone

Our favorite aspect of the Challenge was seeing such a wide variety of mashups. Developers submitted apps built on a bunch of platforms - OS, browser, web and iPhone. And while a lot of the mashups focused on tweaking the current web search paradigm, many were highly specialized (such as CopyrightSpot) or vertically focused (e.g. PlayerSearch). A handful of apps even focused on new ranking algorithms (e.g. Surf Canyon). Drumroll please... After 5 days of voting and thousands of votes, the community has spoken. We're happy to announce that KallOut is the first prize winner and socialmention takes the runner-up prize. Mashable will be profiling KallOut and its developer soon, so keep your eyes peeled for a post. We'd like to thank Mashable and all the developers who participated in the challenge. Congratulations to KallOut and socialmention! The BOSS Team