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

Thu May 31 16:02:07 UTC 2007

My point about seo is that it is gaming the system and done by weak people who have sites that shouldn't rank high. We are not trying to seo--we are trying to help people avoid bad sites and find good ones.

We hope seo dies--quickly. I'm afraid it will be slow however.

Seo means making your sites better for search engines. Mahalo fights against that--we reward people who optimize their sites for humans. :)

Seo will be a footnote in the history of searxh in five years. Jimmy wales and his team, and the team at mahalo.com will end this nonsense in short order.

Mahalo and wikia FTW!!!

J
---------------
Jason at Calacanis.com | 310-456-4900
www.calacanis.com  

-----Original Message-----
From: Allen Stern <allen at centernetworks.com>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 08:43:19 
To:search-l at wikia.com
Subject: Re: [Search-l] _Techcrunch_: Jason Calacanis Launches Mahalo Today:
 Human Powered Search

Jason,

It would be great for you to provide responses to the 4 points I mention 
in my review. And you should know that calling people names behind their 
backs would never be allowed on the handball court in bay ridge. 
Especially since your site could become the next "experts-exchange" and 
since you appear to want to own the seo space, the same space you claim 
is dead.

I understand how your service works and whether you have 4k or 10k, it 
will work the same. Perhaps you can provide this mailing list with the 
RTB and other benefits that you sold the investors for Mahalo.

-- Allen

Jason Calacanis wrote:
> On 5/30/07, Allen Stern <allen at centernetworks.com> wrote:
>> I posted my (what appears to be the only critical review) here:
>> http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-launches-my-critical-review
>> -- Allen
>
> only critical review?!?! you're kidding right? the SEO slimebuckets
> are going crazy saying this will never work (I wonder why... :-)
>
> if you want to do a real review I suggest taking our search pages and
> compare them to Google, Yahoo, and Ask. Your review doesn't really do
> that.
>
> That being said we only have 4,000 pages and it's like Wikipedia in
> year one... we've got a long way to go. In a year when there are
> 10,000+ it will make more sense. also, you have nothing to lose if you
> use mahalo: we show google if we dont have a response--so nothing
> lost, and a huge gain if we have a hit!
>
> j
>
>
>> >
>> > On 5/30/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> [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
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>>
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