NYC-based Indeed.com, a niche search engine, has announced a partnership to power Mamma Careers. I’ll be the first to admit, this specific instance isn’t big news, but they are on a partnering spree, alongside their primary competitor, SimplyHired. SimplyHired powers MySpace Jobs, as well as LinkedIn Jobs (to name a couple). Both Indeed and SimplyHired are securing as many partnerships as possible to power the job search functionality on various websites. Employers can submit URLs to job listings, but can’t directly post jobs on Indeed or SimplyHired — that is still left to the established job sites including Yahoo’s HotJobs (insert link here), Monster.com, and CareerBuilder (insert link here).

Newspapers have long been the place to go for jobs — then the job sites (and Craigslist) popped up to provide an online version of the same service electronically. Now specific vertical job search engines (including Google Base) have evolved to aggregate and index job postings from online listings.

Enter social networking. The next evolution of online job searching would seem to be within social networking websites where users could refer friends to a job. As of now, Facebook and Friendster don’t have job searches yet. Look for partnerships in the future.

Jobster is a start-up that is heavily funded and focusing on adding some social networking aspects to the job hunt process. Another stealth start-up looking to “revolutionize” the online job search is itzBig, which we are told is backed by an investment bank and is being run by CEO Hank Stringer (founder of Hire.com) and Chairman Jim Hammock (former CEO/Chairman of Hire.com).

Online job websites have been around for 10 years now — they haven’t made much change since originally launching to improve the process of candidates looking for jobs, and recruiters looking for candidates. Recruiters have to paw through tons of resumes (that lack format consistency), and candidates have to search through multi-level marketing scams and other spam.

In all honesty, finding a job online sucks. Indeed and SimplyHired have taken it to the next level by aggregating all jobs into one search, but I want to see a company come out and eHarmony-ize the job market. Make it so candidates go through a 15- to 30-minute application process that might include various tests related to their claimed skillsets. Allow recruiters to specify what skillsets are required and make them somehow rank the importance of the required skillsets.

I’d also like to see some social networking aspects along the lines of LinkedIn — allow people to refer their friends to jobs. Yahoo! could integrate HotJobs with their 360 service. Monster.com could integrate with the Facebook API to add some social networking. IAC has put a hault on acquisitions, but a jobs website seems like a good addition to their extensive consumer portfolio — their own Ask.com search engine doesn’t offer a vertical job search. Possibly an Indeed or SimplyHired acquisition?

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Steve Poland, a guest contributor. Steve is the founder and web strategy consultant for Vested Ventures, a firm specializing in website consulting, internet marketing, and high-end custom web development.

• Sphere It
• 

Google Blog officially announces the launch of Google Base. We previously anticipated the launch of Google Base (along with everyone else) in late October.

Bottom Line: This is not a very interesting application in its current form. Keith Teare says it’s like a 1985 dBASE file with less functionality. It’s ugly. It’s centralized content with less functionality than ebay or craigslist. The content is not integrated directly into Google search results, but “relevance” can bump it up into main and local search (and froogle).

Rob Hof’s at Business Week is also blase about it. He says “eBay and others may not have much to fear just yet”

Additional information and FAQs on Google Base in the About section.

Features:

• Cost: Free
• Item types accepted: All types of online and offline information and images
• Languages: You can submit your information in many languages; the Google Base interface, however, including the Help Content, is currently available only in English, English UK and German.
• Reach: Items you submit to Google Base can be found on Google Base and, depending on their relevance, may also appear on Google properties like Google, Froogle and Google Local.
• How it’s different: Google Base enables you to add attributes that better describe your content so that users can easily find it. The more popular specific attributes become, the more often we’ll suggest them when others post the same items. Similarly, items that become more popular will show up as suggested item types in the Choose an existing item type drop down menu.

There are two ways to upload data - a web interface for one item at a time and a bulk uploading option to send content in XML.

I’ve tested Google Base out. The general idea is that you pick a category for your post. There are suggested categories - course calendars, events and activities, jobs, reviews, wanted ads, etc. You can also create your own category.

Each category has its own fields to ease data input. For instance, the “vehicles” category includes fields for vehicle type, year, make, etc. You fill out any or all of these fields, add additional fields (called “attributes”) if you choose, and add a title, description and keywords (tags). You can also upload a picture or point to a picture on the web.

I found a few bugs in this form. For instance, adding “techcrunch” as a tag failed because it was “misspelled” and it simply wouldn’t include it.

Once I removed the techcrunch tag I was able to add an expiration date and post my test content, which is published after a short delay, along with a permanent URL (this is just a quick test).

Once content is published, it can be edited from a dashboard.

Content can also be searched at Google Base. The above screen shot is a search for “recipes”. Clicking on a particular item pulls up its permanent URL (example), where full details can be viewed and the posted contacted via email.

Brian Benzinger has a more positive review here. And check out what Dave Winer has to say (”It’s microcontent without the schemas”).

• Sphere It
• 

Reports are out that Google Base will be launching soon, perhaps even today. Dirson has a screen shot up on Flickr and additional images are on Wouter Schut’s blog.

Google Base appears to be a service to publish content directly to google and have them host it in a centralized way. If so, this would be going completely against the accelerating trend of decentralized publishing.

My prediction: when the dust settles, this will either be largely ignored or universally hated. Centralized content is boring…so much is going on at the edge of the web, why would anyone try to put it all back in the center?

Philipp Lenssen has more details, including the text from the screen shot below:

Post your items on Google.

Google Base is Google’s database into which you can add all types of content. We’ll host your content and make it searchable online for free.

Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.

UPDATE: Tom Oliveri, Product Marketing Manager at Google, has posted a short note about Google Base on the Google blog:

You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we’re testing, and speculating about our plans. Here’s what’s really going on. We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it’s an exciting product, and we’ll let you know when there’s more news.

Thanks Anthony.

• Sphere It
•