[Search-l] information-revolution.org

[Fred Bauder]

 Most of a corporation's income goes toward expenses. This deal is like gambling at Las Vegas, it's fun even if the house always takes a cut. In this case it a useful project even if someone takes a profit.

Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Braun [mailto:nathan at litepost.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:01 AM
To: search-l at wikia.com
Subject: Re: [Search-l] information-revolution.org

Money is good. Nonprofits (like Wikipedia) need money.

Profits simply won't work if we want to realistically compete with google over the medium to long-term.

Being a nonprofit would be _the_ chief advantage to competing with google. It would give Wikia Search unprecedented "moral authority."

I mean: who gets the money? Jimmy Wales? Why profit? Profit does not make sense in this world we're living in, except for traditional corporations. Profit is from a bygone era- the world of separation, not where everybody connected like today.

Profit implies dis-connection, IMO. Somebody or some entity is accumulating undue advantage. This adds unnecessary friction to the market in general and our product in particular.

NB

On 5/23/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote: A great search engine is going to turn up commercial sites and products which relate to the search. Since we are going to display them anyway, why not charge a little?

How about highlighting business and products which support us and make a little blurb about "Support our sponsors". But without changing their ranking. This could include investors in Wikia like Amazon. But could include a mom and pop cheese shop too. Assuming the search was for cheese in Miami and the shop has a website that shows up in a legitimate search, like "Miami" "blue cheese". 

I think the money would pour in. We could even have levels of support highlighted in different ways.

But, you know, no support at all and that unhighlighted link is still there to click on. So if ebay never gives us a penny a search for online auction is still going to return ebay. But not highlighted. I guess we could program a kind of "aura" which surrounds links to sponsors. After all, they would be angels, of a sort. A golden aura would be of the first rank...

Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Braun [mailto:nathan at litepost.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 09:44 AM
To:search-l at wikia.com
Subject: Re: [Search-l] information-revolution.org


Wikia Search should not be for profit. Period.
That is the only way we can realistically outdo Google, at this point in time, IMHO.

On 5/22/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 10:33:25AM +0200, Dirson wrote:
> If a project aims to beat Google, must it appeal to users' sense of
> justice (fight the monopoly), or must it offer them a cool search
> engine?
>
> Let's remember that Google didn't spend any buck on marketing.
> There're enough tools on the Internet to spread the existence of a new
> search tool. If it rocks, users are to adopt it.

 Well, while maybe a product which is super-insanely-successful
generates its own marketing, that doesn't mean only super-insanely-successful
products are successes of any sort. That is, marketing can be part of
a moderately successful product. And there's plenty of good search
innovations which don't get much notice (my favorite example here is
clusty.com , which does result clustering, and can really help in
searches which are heavily spammed - I have no connection to it, I
just like it).

 And one reason I believe some search experts might be
underestimating the Wikia-search's chances at a (moderate) success is
that due to Wikipedia's ultrahigh profile, Wikia-search sure doesn't
lack for publicity and marketing! (we must pause here for the
obligatory disclaimer that the Wikia corporation and Wikipedia are
not FORMALLY connected - but my statement is still accurate).

 "Beat Google" is a good marketing hook.

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