Earlier this summer, Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan joined Yahoo! as Vice President and Yahoo! Research Fellow. Raghu joins us after 20 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a professor of computer science and a co-founder of the Data Mining Institute. We sat down with Raghu to talk about his thoughts on joining Yahoo! and his mission to advance social search.

On Joining Yahoo!

Q: Did Yahoo! find you? or did you find Yahoo!?
A: I was at the University of Wisconsin for 20 years, only taking a brief sabbatical to start my own company called QUIQ. I have known Usama Fayyad for years, so he talked with me about joining Yahoo! Research when he heard I was considering leaving Madison. I spoke with colleagues at Google, Microsoft and IBM, as well as some other universities, but in the end, Yahoo! was an easy choice for many reasons.

I wanted to continue doing research, and I have also been interested in the web and online communities for a while. Yahoo! provided a natural fit for both my expertise in managing massive amounts of data and my interest in web communities. It’s also nice that a company like Yahoo! is willing to embrace new ideas and invest in a world-class research organization, and then has the enormous customer-base and resources to execute on the ideas that emerge. At Yahoo! Research, you can take an idea and build around it, hang your shingle on the web, and get people to come try it out, all the while studying the underlying principles rigorously and addressing the challenges of building dynamic, scalable online systems … this is not easy to do at a university.

What I really liked about Yahoo is the overarching philosophies about developing a community-centric business. Yahoo! has Mail, Groups, Delicious, Flickr and others that clearly are an integral part of the overall corporate strategy. But at the end of the day, throughout the interview process, the dynamics were good. It’s nice to be at a web-oriented company, and Yahoo! has a most-impressive research group.

Q: What can a database and data mining expert bring to a social search team?
A: Search should do more than connect a person and a web page. Search should reflect how people use the web to live their lives online, whether they are sharing photos, participating in groups, researching restaurants or swapping ideas. I think the next big step in search functionality will come from enabling users to share what they know, and Yahoo! already facilitates sharing in a myriad ways. The key to social search is taking this shared activity to the next level by using it to improve ranking of search results, and to connect people with others who are authorities on certain topics.

Where does data management come in? A social ecosystem is growing on the web, so we need to build the apps that facilitate it; managing the information and relationships is a central challenge. Where does data mining come in? Learning from shared activity is a key to effective social search. Equally important, data mining research can suggest ways to detect and prevent breaches of privacy - trust is central to online communities.

Q: What is your #1 goal for the first six months on the job?
A: My main goal in the first six months is to get a clue as to what is going on at Yahoo! This is a big company with a lot going on! I want to connect with folks in community products like Answers and Groups, and engage with teams developing computing platforms. I also want to get going on research, and start building the team in the new Community Systems group within Yahoo! Research.

Q: What was your first impression of the Yahoo! campus?
A: Cool: free coffee! (Raghu starts his day with a double macchiato or a double cortado)

On Social Search

Q: You have a vision to “make social search natural to users.” How will you make this happen?
A: I think social search is a core concept that should be woven into a number of applications that people use to search, to share, and in general to get things done online. At the end of the day, people should do what they enjoy, what they need to get done, and the applications (including search) should simply become more effective, thanks to our ability to analyze shared information and use it to help them connect to what they are looking for. The key insight behind social search is therefore to amplify the human element of information sharing by using it to enhance algorithmic search, and vice-versa.

On Random Thoughts

Q: You made a big move from Wisconsin … what has been your biggest surprise about California living?
A: I didn’t know you had things like heat waves here. I knew about earthquakes, but this heat is un-cool.

Q: Will you miss the snowy winters?
A: No, but my kids will miss the snow and ice. I thought the California winters would be a bonus to moving here, but they are really disappointed about leaving the skiing and skating, which is a way of life in Wisconsin. (And no, driving 3 hours to Tahoe doesn’t make up for it.)

Q: So tell us, is the cheese really better in California?
A: This is a loaded question. I?ll just say that the cows are happier in Wisconsin, and I have not gotten around to trying the California cheese yet!