I was just thinking after reading some of the backlash on Robert Scoble's Mahalo videos, some of which you can find at Dare's, and on Search Engine Land.

The principle behind Mahalo I guess is like a Wiki for Searching.  There are editors who put design pages of a subject and links to the most appropriate content, and these people will maintain the pages.  So whenever you search Mahalo for a topic you're getting the best results the editors can find, if not the newest.

This post is also about another argument that has been floating round the blogosphere lately on Open Social Networks, on Dare's, Wired, and Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror about why Social Networks should be open to search engines and the general public.

So basically, the idea being that from what I gather Del.icio.us isn't an open network.  When I Google for a term I never get a del.icio.us link unless it's specifically to a tag that has been defined.

So, instead of Mahalo, wouldn't del.icio.us be a better way of defining the "Social Graph" of searching?  I mean, for the most part I don't see tech guys using del.icio.us social network for linking other people in, which I see as a huge oversight and I love reading my feed of what other people are bookmarking, however, there is the possibility of tracing social groups on there.

There is also the simple fact that a post that has 2000 bookmarks linked to it is probably of higher value than a post that doesn't appear on del.icio.us, or that has fewer.

I'd actually love to know if del.icio.us is open, or how Google treats the site.  Whether multiple links from del.icio.us count or whether it's treated as one with a higher ranking or what the story is.

Because generally, I wouldn't move to something like Mahalo, because I don't believe in just looking for a few peoples opinions on which sites I should be browsing, in comparison to Google whose algorithm has rarely let me down in finding what I need to know - I just feel if we needed a social network or group of people who control the ranking of a page then a system like del.icio.us is probably perfect to feed into the mix.

Then again, a lot of people probably repost their del.icio.us feeds onto their blogs, and Google does have Google reader share links, and their own bookmarks to compete.

But I'm probably more likely to search Google, or go to del.icio.us and search my network for something, than I am to ever take someones opinion from Mahalo. Because I "know" the guys I network with on del.icio.us and I already respect their opinions and know they're like-minded in the technologies they look at.