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

[Nitin Borwankar]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> Nitin, I am not sure where you think we disagree.
>
> Yes, some people do things just for fun.  Some people do it for fun  
> and to make money.  And some people do things just to make money.
>
> My point was simply that there is a fallacy involve whenever people  
> notice that "gee, some people get paid money to do this, aren't
> the ones who aren't simply suckers who are working for free"?  The  
> answer is: no.
>
> --Jimbo


My, possibly wrong, reading of the discussions so far, is that we are 
inadvertently tending towards a monolithic model of revenue and that 
inadvertently there is no revenue framework for individual search 
*providers*.

While I see a lot of discussion of user feedback etc. for ways to 
improve search consumer experience, I don't see an active discussion for 
how search content providers will make money.  Without concrete 
discussions about that,  we can argue concepts but there is no way that 
someone can have fun and make money providing search content.  There is 
no existing model for individual search content providers to make money 
off the content.  So it will take some focused discussion and it will be 
an innovation that will be disruptive to existing search providers, as 
well as being a barrier to entry.

So will there be a place in the "brave new new search engine world" for 
people who want to have fun and make money without being employed?  How 
will that work?  We seemed to disagree on the need for enabling such a 
mode - or at least that's what I gathered.
Maybe I read things wrong.  So let me state my case.

I am interested in enabling a "long tail of revenue" for search content 
*providers*. 

I, for one, want to enable a search regime where individual specialists 
can assemble mini vertical search indexes and plug them into a global 
fabric, have the right queries routed to them by the fabric, and make 
money on the traffic via ads, subscriptions, what have you.  Result 
quality feedback from users (a' la eBay reputation) should also be part 
of this so that bad providers will get squelched via feedback.

The big question then is are we building a monolith or are we building a 
distributed, resilient, adaptive search network with a network model for 
revenue?  What is the network model for revenue ?

The latter allows  a "long tail  for vertical search revenue",  the 
monolith seems to go hand in hand with "single aggregator of revenue"
model. 

So I am not sure if we disagree, but we just haven't really discussed 
this yet, for whatever reason.

-- 


Nitin Borwankar

http://walruscarpenter.wordpress.com	Of shoes  and ships  and sealing wax  of cabbages and kings
http://greener.com    Find, Learn, Act .... Greener, the search engine for the planet
http://tagschema.com  Implementation of tag database applications

nitin at borwankar.com
510-872-7066