[Search-l] "directory" vs. "search engine"

[Seth Finkelstein]

> From: "Aerik Sylvan" <aerik at thesylvans.com>
> On the surface, it sounds a lot like dmoz.

	Ah, but I think the key difference in Mahalo vs DMOZ is
in a halfway reasonable monetization strategy (cream-skim the
top search terms). This is not *comprehensive* coverage of the Web,
which I think is tripping people up when it comes to discussing
directory vs. general search engine. Rather, it's *focus*, on the
specific segment likely to be most profitable. Yes, it's really
more of a "directory", not a "search engine". But the other side of
that is it's a directory which is optimized to work both "in" and "out"
with a search engine, and an eye towards profitability. Which is something
of a twist on the usual directory concept (which usually starts from a
taxonomy and concerns itself with breadth).

On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 11:39:13PM +0000, Jason McCabe Calacanis wrote:
> I believe ceos and management teams of tech firms aren't the only
> ones who should get paid. :)
>
> Editors do real work and should--if the choose--be paid for
> it. Working for free as a hobby is fine (ie wikipedia), but why
> anyone would work for free to make venture capitalists and ceos
> right is beyond me.

	For the joy and happiness, the *community*, of course. I think
part of what Y. Benkler is analyzing in his infamous book, though not put
so bluntly, is this: If you have 100K to hire workers, you can put 10K
each towards 10 people (and after benefits and overhead, pay them around
5K each total), Or, put 100K towards a really good marketing flack
who will go around trying to convince 10 people in the entire world to
WORK FOR FREE, because gosh golly they're contributing to A New Era,
and showing those elitist priests up there that citizen-amateurs can
do a job without pay that's every bit as good as paid professionals.

http://ireadnews.net/2007/06/01/britannica-rules-not-necessarily-with-the-advent-of-wikipedia/
"Theresa is one of a dedicated band of unpaid volunteers who act as
the guardians of the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia - one of the great
internet successes of the decade. The passion for sharing knowledge
that is apparent in her teaching - she loves her Year 1s and 2s
because, she says, they are full of wonder and enthusiasm for learning -
translates after hours into tireless work for Wikipedia. So firmly
does she believe in its mission - to accumulate every piece of
knowledge in the world in one easily accessible place - that she
spends hours in the evening, or in the early morning before leaving
for work, checking the site, editing pages and helping contributors."

	But I get in trouble when I talk about that. At least in the
wrong place. Anyway, I may be projecting, but I think the membership
of this list skews more towards those on the code-developer end, and
interested parties keeping an eye on the project, rather than those
who will be doing grunt work of writing specific results.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php