1. A method performed by one or more processing devices, comprising: receiving a search query from a computing device associated with a user; performing a search of electronic content based on the search query; obtaining a search result based on the search of electronic content; obtaining configurable content that relates to the search query, the configurable content including user-independent content and a field that is configurable wherein the user-independent content comprises advertising and the field comprises a text field; identifying, based on the search query, user-specific content that describes the user and is responsive to the search query, wherein the user-specific content comprises information obtained from a social network of the user; configuring the field of the configurable content based on the user-specific content to thereby produce configured content comprising the user-independent content and the user-specific content; and outputting data corresponding to the search result and the configured content for use in generating an online publication containing the search result and the configured content.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying user-specific content that corresponds to the search query and is responsive to the search query comprises: determining a factor that is relevant to the search query; and performing a search for user-specific content based on the factor; wherein the user-specific content is identified based on the search.