[Search-l] _Techcrunch_: Jason Calacanis Launches Mahalo Today: Human Powered Search

[Seth Finkelstein]

[Heavy disclaimer - I got a brief email from Jason Calacanis pointing me
to this article, but I have no connection to him or his ventures
(all stock options gratefully accepted, but I'm too independent-minded
to make a good promoter/flack :-))]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/jason-calacanis-launches-mahalo-today-human-powered-search/

Jason Calacanis Launches Mahalo Today: Human Powered Search
Michael Arrington

Jason Calacanis, formerly of Weblogs, Inc. and more recently an
Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital, will launch his newest
startup, Mahalo, this afternoon at 3 PM PST. The site is password
protected until then.

Mahalo is a search engine, and will join Powerset as the more
interesting new engines to launch in 2007.

The service has features that are similar to the new Netscape news
finder product that Calacanis launched last year at AOL: expert guides
will determine the most relevant results. The main search results are
provided by guides (Mahalo employees), who find relevant results for
search terms. User submitted results are also included.

The primary results for search terms are included at the top, in a
"top seven" area. These are hand picked results from the guids that
should all be good results for the query (see screen shot below of
results for "Paris Hotels" - click for larger view). To the right of
the results are "Guide Notes" which include additional information
including relevant additional searches and "Fast Facts." In the case
of Paris Hotels, the "Fast Facts" include the country, language,
currenty and telephone country code.

Additional hand picked results appear below the Top Seven, and Google
results round out the query.

Also in the right sidebar is a place for users who've registered with
the site to submit links relevant to the query. The more users who've
submitted a unique link, the higher it appears on the list. Mahalo
will be looking for fraud in this area - if a guide determines a link
to be spammy, they will ban the link, the user and the user's IP
address "forever." However, if a link gets enough votes and is
determined to be relevant by the guides, it will move over into the
main search results area.

Each search page also has a discussion/forum area, where any
registered user can add their thoughts to what's included on the
results page.

Mahalo has 40 full time guides today and have created 4,000 results
pages - each of which will serve approximately 12 various queries.
Calacanis says that the guides are steadily improving results and
adding more queries - they expect to have 10,000 by end of year, and
25,000 by end of 2008.

They are really focusing on top search terms, which they obtain from a
number of search engines and other sources, Calacanis says. If a user
makes a query that has no Mahalo results, they are given Google
results instead. Calacanis stressed that it is going to take them a
couple of years to get really deep results for most queries - until
the end of 2007 the site will be in Alpha, and will be in beta for all
of 2008.  "It takes a few years to build a really compelling search
engine," he said.

Mahalo has now completed two rounds of financing. The first was led by
Sequoia Capital. The second was led by Elon Musk and News Corp. The
size of the rounds have not been disclosed, but Calacanis says he has
enough capital to run the business for up to four years without
revenue.

Disclosure: We have no financial interest in Mahalo; however, Jason
Calacanis is our partner on our upcoming TechCrunch20 Conference.

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