Lunchlecture: "Bringing search to fediverse: Searsia"

Bringing search to fediverse: Searsia

by Djoerd Hiemstra

The fediverse, or "federated universe", consist of platforms and tools that are not controlled by a single entity. A classical example is email: Anyone can run an email server, and send and receive emails. More recent examples are GNU Social applications such as Mastodon, where anyone can run a Twitter-like social network server, and post and read messages.

Searsia is an attempt to bring to fediverse to search. Searsia provides an approach to search that: Connects and shares large collections of independent search engines; Selects for queries the most relevant search engines in the search fediverse; Combines sources in an aggregated search interface; and Learns over time what kind of information each source provides.

Searsia is demonstrated by UTwente Search, an enterprise search engine for the University of Twente that combines the results of about 35 sources, including results from Google's web crawl, from Courses, from News, the Telephone directory, the Timetables, as well as results from social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Lunchlecture: "Bringing search to fediverse: Searsia"

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