Yesterday Christian presented andUNITE at the Innovation Lab of the UnternehmerTUM in Munich. Manage&More brings business and studies together and organized a founders day and a lot of students from the Technical University attended the event. It is always quite impressive to speak or just “be” at the TU Munich: It looks like a great university for students, a university which offers a lot of opportunities, modern spaces, interesting events, … Sometimes we wish we ourselves had studied there.

Anyways: andUNITE offers a great use case for students who work in groups. Just sign up, connect with your group members, set your privacy settings into “friendship mode” and start using andUNITE as a collaborative search tool. From now on you are able to exchange your internet searches with the other group members so that everyone can see what he/she is currently working on.

A major request by many users is finally fulfilled: andUNITE now also offers an application for facebook. With the “Share your searches” application you can always let your facebook friends know what you are currently searching for on the Web. After you added the facebook application the latest of your public search terms will be also published on your facebook profile page. Furthermore: You are also able to see what your facebook friends are currently searching for on the Web. Of course you always have full control of the privacy settings of each and every search term.
Add the andUNITE “Share your searches” application to your facebook profile here. Feedback is always welcome!

Here are some screenshots:

My searches on my facebook profile

What are my facebook friends’ latest searches?

The settings page gives you full control about the privacy settings of each of your search terms

After the article about andUNITE the German blog IT Frontal published an interview with Bernd and Christian, two of the founders of andUNITE. The interview ist not only about what andUNITE is all about but also about how everything started and what some of the future ideas are like. You will also find a few notes about the philosophy, the idea and the use of andUNITE.
Thank you, Thomas Sprenger, also for the inspiring talk about “swarm intelligence” and related topics.

andUNITE is a launch partner of the German friendfeed competitor freundenews.de which was launched today. With the integration of andUNITE into freundenews users of freundenews are able to share their Internet searches with their friends not only on andUNITE but also on freundenews.
The integration of andUNITE into freundenews is a perfect example of how to use andUNITE as the basis for an innovative kind of collaborative search. From now on the freundenews community can help someone with his problem if he searches for something on the Internet and makes his search public through andUNITE. By doing so andUNITE also enables adding a unique information about the user to his profile on freundenews.

More about andUNITE.com and freundenews.de.

At the German Weblog “IT Frontal” Thomas Sprenger from Pironet published an article about andUNITE. He puts andUNITE in an overall open search context and sees tools like andUNITE as a threat even for Google (wow, really??). In fact: We believe that we actually enriche Google and other search engines with a service they themselves don’t want to provide. The future lies in both: bot based search à la Google, Yahoo! & Co and whatever kind of “social” search à la Wikia Search or andUNITE. What we especially care about is the knowledge which sits deep inside the people’s brains and which can not be found on the Web. Here it makes sense to bring people back into search and let them talk to each others about their questions, problems or common interests. THAT’s what andUNITE is all about. We don’t realy care about bots…

You might have noticed it already: andUNITE has got a new logo! We hope you like the new one, too (though we are still in beta). It was designed by the same designer who designed the StumbleUpon logo, btw. Let us know your opinion!

Do you want to see who else searched for the same on Google, Yahoo! or Live Search as you do? Members of andUNITE.com can download the andUNITE toolbar and will then be able to see which other member of andUNITE.com also searched e.g. for one’s favorite band, homework topic, product description or just a computer problem. If you want and they allow it you can immediately get in touch with this person and get help from him/her. And: If you want, you can also by clicking on “me, too!” post yourself right next to your favorite search term so that other people can see you and you can start to talk about your topic instantly.

So, how does it work again? Sign up (if you want anonymously) at andUNITE.com with a username and password, invite your friends and add the andUNITE toolbar to your browser (so far Firefox only, sorry…). From now on you will be able to see who else searched for exactly the same as you did.

And btw: Pick your favorite search engine on andUNITE.com and add andUNITE to your browser. By entering your search terms at andUNITE you will be able to share your searches with friends and others. Keep in mind that you always have full (!) control and transparency over your privacy settings!

A screenshot of the andUNITE social layer on Google after a search for “china”:

A screenshot of the andUNITE social layer on Yahoo! after a search for “china”:

A screenshot of the andUNITE social layer on Live Searchafter a search for “china”:

You are getting closer to the andUNITE sensation of this month: andUNITE is going to show up at the famous German Schmidt & Pocher late night show! Wanna watch how our co-founder Bernd is going to buy “Boogle” live at the show? Then tune in on May 29th at night.

You think this is crazy and a spoof? Well, then read this message we received a few days ago: