Tafiti - Microsoft Previews the Future of Search

Posted by Rene LeMerle in September 3rd, 2007

Microsoft has launched Tafiti Beta - a service which could give us an insight into Microsoft’s vision for search. Tafiti makes use of the new Microsoft Silverlight development platform and is powered with Live Search (the new MSN search service).

Tafiti is an aesthetically pleasing and interactive search service that gives users the power to handle their search results and collate results on “Shelves” before delving into the source sites.

According to the Tafiti FAQ:

Tafiti, which means “do research” in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.

For the sake of testing out the uber-cool interface - it’s worth checking out the service (note: you’ll need to download Silverlight first - about 1.5Mb). At the end of the day - the quality of the service is still heavily impacted by the quality of the search results - but at least Microsoft is finally challenging the drab interfaces that have become synonymous with search these days.