(Source: PRNewswire)BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Me.dium, an award-winning social software company, today announced that its Social Search service (http://me.dium.com/search), the first crowd-powered search engine, will be integrated into Microsoft's new Windows(R) Internet Explorer(R) 8 Beta 2 (IE8). Me.dium joins eBay, Facebook, and Yahoo as featured partners for IE8's Beta 2 launch today. Microsoft has chosen Me.dium as a launch partner because of the unique value it provides to search, and Medium's ability to help IE8 take the web experience "beyond the page."

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Me.dium's Social Search has a unique ability to harness the activity of the crowds to let users find information that has relevance based on what people are actually looking at right now. This enhances Microsoft's IE8 promises to deliver the best browser for what people do every day, making that experience faster, easier and safer than ever. Searching is the most commonly performed task on the web. By featuring Me.dium's innovative search experience, IE8 now provides the user with an entirely new level of crowd- powered information on top of traditional search, and helps users to keep up with what's hot, and see recommendations ranked by what people are actually looking at; reflecting the changing interests of the online community.

"Because Me.dium's Social Search results are ranked by what people are actually looking at in the moment, we're able to surface news, reviews, pictures and videos that are hot right now. And as the zeitgeist of the online community changes, so do the search results," said Kimball Musk, CEO of Me.dium. "IE8 provides the perfect platform to keep up with what's hot using the Me.dium IE8 search service. Type a term into IE8's Search box, and Me.dium returns a list of results showing the hottest pages online right now relevant to your query. Me.dium also provides visual indicators next to each search result, letting you know if the page is increasing or decreasing in hotness, and how long people tend to spend on each page, keeping you in the know, without you having to leave your browser."

In addition to adding social ranking to IE8's Search offerings, Me.dium's integration with IE8 includes the Me.dium What's Hot Webslice and the Me.dium Discovery Accelerator, weaving crowd-powered relevance throughout the user's experience. Also, along with the aforementioned features, the Me.dium Social Toolbar will continue to be a featured recommendation on Microsoft's new IE Add-Ons website (http://www.ieaddons.com)/

The Me.dium What's Hot Webslice, first demoed at MIX08, allows users to keep up with what's hot, right within their IE8 browser.