The story: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/23/kikin-personalizes-search-by-tapping-into-your-social-graph/<p>Kikin looks promising due to the fact that it sits on top of search engines you already use (google, bing, yahoo). However, I still feel as if there's something missing in this realm. I'm not yet convinced about the value of real-time search, as well as social search (what your friends are saying). I've used kikin for a couple days, but decided to axe it. The slight slowdown and chunkiness are not worth seeing a bunch of chinese tweet spam.<p>Additionally, I found something interesting regarding their terms and conditions:<p>"In addition, the kikin Plugin Software may modify the layout and order of presentation of such search results and may replace a search result returned by such Internet search engines with the same or substantially the same search result content displayed by the kikin Plugin Software."<p>So, essentially Kikin can replace any search result on google with their own result, or sponsored result? Sneaky way to monetize...<p>"You also acknowledge and agree that by using the kikin Plugin Software, additional content may be displayed to you on a web page that you visist. kikinmay modify the layout of the web page to accommodate this additional content."<p>So, they can edit Amazon.com to display on their content and sponsored product? The possibilities are endless...<p>Bottom line: cool technology, not a long-term option, a bit scary in terms of the power they have