Jeff Gelles: Marrying search and social networking to enhance commerce

If you use familiar search tools such as Yelp or Angie's List to help choose, say, a great place for Sunday brunch or a trustworthy contractor, maybe you've wondered: Sure, lots of people recommend it, but how do I know I can trust them?

A new Philadelphia company, Cliqsearch, aims to solve that problem in a novel way, with software that links you to recommendations from people you're especially likely to trust: friends, and friends of your friends, who have mentioned a business on social networks.

The intersection of social media and commerce is huge news at the moment, thanks to the blockbuster $5 billion initial public offering announced Wednesday by Facebook. Cliqsearch is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with about $1 million in angel funding, a staff of seven, and a business plan that just this week began drawing revenue.

Cofounder and chief executive officer Alex "Pooyan" Khorram, 37, has already impressed some knowledgeable outsiders, such as Munir Mandviwalla, chair of the management information systems department at Temple University's Fox School of Business.

"People have been looking for the next thing in search for a long time," Mandviwalla said in an interview. "Cliq has added a new dimension to search."

Cliqsearch - yes, the name is a double-barreled pun on clicks and cliques - is designed to address a growing problem on the Internet that affects its value as a search tool for goods or services.

Some companies have been shown to be paying for shills willing to post positive reviews on their products - a phenomenon called "opinion spam" that threatens to devalue the whole concept of "asking the crowd" for recommendations.

Even trusted resources such as Angie's List and Consumers Checkbook provide only anonymous information, leaving them at similar risk. And, as many people have learned from reading movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or hotel critiques on TripAdvisor, one person's poison may be another's cup of tea.

Those problems, coupled with the explosive growth of social media, provided the germ of Khorram's idea.

With websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, consumers can easily see if friends or associates have mentioned a business. They can even post questions such as: "Can somebody recommend a plumber?"