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

[Aerik Sylvan]

Jason,
What's different from your approach, and a directory with a search bar?  If
I search dmoz for php ( http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=php ),
I get websites picked by humans.  I felt that dmoz was too closed and so
started a wiki based directory (http://www.wikidweb.com) way before Aboutus,
or any other directory-in-a-wikis poppped up, but I am not Jimmy Wales or
Jason Calacanis, so I had no quick marketing outlet.

I think it is not hard to provide a decent resource for "big head" results,
if you are willing to put in the manpower.  But any of these fall short in
two areas: 1) the long tail is neglected and 2) all the traditional schemes
favor the entrenched players.

Addressing the long tail is hard because is is just too many websites to
proactively look at manually.  I get really excited about using alternative
weighting schemes (tagging comes to mind first) for these.  Empower the
masses to tell you what website have good quality content for what topics.
The first version of Wikia (the search engine) was an attempt to do this,
but the model was too cumbersome for the average user, and then too easily
spammed.  (I had an opportunity to work on that model, but it wasn't
important to Jimmy at the time, and I didn't have hundreds of extra hours to
spend writing code... by now of course, I'm wondering if I didn't miss out
on a chance to be a paid devloper, but oh well).

The second item, that most search engines and directories favor entrenched
players, is a space where I think we can break some new ground.  Sites like
Digg (which I think is just Fark.com, but where articles are selected by a
community) are great because they bring you the new and interesting.  Some
resources will always be the best in for a given query (php.net for "php"
for example) but there are a great many topics where newer pages may well
have the most relevant material ("breast cancer research", "astrophysics",
"search engine optimization" are a few ideas that come to mind).  Google
favors the established pages, and one of the basic premises of the Open
Directory Project is to find the "best" webpages for a given category.  For
topics where the most relevant information may be the newest, this does not
serve the searcher well.

So, Jason, I don't think your model (or mine) can effectively address the
long tail, but I would encourage you to build in processes and triggers to
constantly find the new and interesting content.  If you take my advice, you
can pay me what you think it's worth :-)

Aerik

http://aerik.com - how vain is that, a domain for my first name
http://wikidweb.com - the Wiki Directory of the Web



On 5/31/07, Jason McCabe Calacanis < jason at calacanis.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
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