Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo’
- In: Company | Google | Search | Yahoo
- 4 Comments
Seems like Yahoo’s trying their hands at rearranging the search display. We are so used to using google and i think can hardly imagine search results in a different layout
However, I remember being asked by someone(actually in an interview) what would you change in google search and first thing that came to my mind was- “Change the Display”
Anyways back to Glue, yahoo’s new search display project.
First look and you say what the ***** …… Search for something and you get what looks like a Websites Home page itself…..Disastrous….
I think the whole notion of giving images,video and other media formats relevant to what you search is a bit funny…… HOwever I understand for relatively simple web users this might be helpful…But puttin all the format results in one page ..is it really the best UI idea that Yahoo comes up with?????
U’d rather display normal search results with tabs to access video n pics ….which thus keep populating at the back while u browse thru sites ….. Have a look at the Pic and decide for yourself…..dont forget to comment…..
One change i’d love to see in search results display would be to display web pages as(hidden text) very low res pics decently sized ….This because u most of the times know by just having a first look at the page whether its what you searched for…..Well snapping billions of homepages not a herculean task for Google or yahoo …..anyways ive given up one of my best startup ideas…..Any body to invest in me????
O! I’d love to be in the Product Team of Glue, boy do i have some ideas 🙂 kiddin ….
- In: Acquisitions | Videos | Yahoo
- 2 Comments
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which just announced buying online video tech provider Maven Networks, has quietly relaunched its consumer video service. The service, which has been retooled a few times and hasn’t been a big competition to the likes of YouTube and others, still has the traffic funnel of Yahoo, so has to be taken into contention. The service has a bigger player, better resolution, a better upload tool, and has some new tools for organizing content. This relaunch does not yet incorporate anything from Maven’s acquisition, but one would expect it to be part of the service down the line…which would probably mean an even higher quality video experience.
One missing thing for Yahoo is any kind of premium downloads. Would expect this not to be done in-house, and someone like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) through its Unbox service could be a partner…after all Amazon has been looking to do such powered-by deals of late.
As reported on paidcontent.org
Here’s the article on Yahoo’s Maven acquisition on paidcontent.org
Life goes on at Yahoo: the company has confirmed its previously rumored acquisition of online video platform Maven Networks, although the price tag of “approximately” $160 million is a bit higher than the previous $150 million estimate. The reports first surfaced on New TeeVee and TechCrunch on Jan. 31, the night before Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) launched its bid for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). It’s not clear if the delay, however, between the initial reports and the official announcement had anything to do with the bigger issues facing the company. Cambridge, MA-based Maven offers a platform for high-res video hosting and distribution, as well as a system for video advertising. Release.
— Maven, which has raised $30 million, has relationships with a number of major content providers, including Fox News, Sony BMG, and “CBS” Sports. Backers include Prism Ventures, Accel Partners and General Catalyst. By comparison, Brightcove, whose CEO Jeremy Allaire was the EIR at General catalyst when the firm invested in Maven, has raised $80 million, since its launch in 2004.
— The company, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo, will remain in Cambridge but becomes part of Hilary Schneider’s Global Partner Solutions group. Yahoo says it plans to invest in the growth of Maven’s overall video business and to expand Maven’s suite with “video monetization services” and “advanced technologies for delivering consumers more relevant advertising experiences.”
— David adds: I spoke with Maven CEO Hilmi Ozguc and Rebecca Paoletti, Yahoo’s director of video strategy/sales. More after the jump…
Both offered details of the complementary aspects of working together, especially as Yahoo prepares to relaunch its video network on Thursday. Both also said that the discussions between Yahoo and Maven occurred month’s before Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo was floated. Ozguc said he regards the Microsoft talk as a side issue far removed from his and Yahoo’s current plans. As for how a Microsoft takeover might affect Maven down the road, Ozguc would only say, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
— A playing field of titans: The nascent stage of online video, which was dominated by startups, has passed, Ozguc said. Now it’s a “playing field of titans and we thought the time was right to become one of the biggest players in online advertising. It’s not just Yahoo’s display and search capabilities, but their deep relationships with publishers that made this such a good fit for us.”
— The combination: Maven manages the video distribution and ad trafficking for over 30 media companies with hundreds of affiliate sites within them. And Yahoo has licensing deals with roughly 75 percent of the major TV ad spenders. “It’s not that Yahoo didn’t have deals with many of the players that we do, but we’ve five years on creating a video publishing system. That technology is the other half of our value proposition. We’re a pure technology provider. We never got into ad sales or creating portals. It’s a very clean relationship from that perspective.”
— Maven brand stays (for now): Ozguc: “We’re still a well-known brand and there’s no reason to do away with it. That’s not to say that Yahoo won’t rebrand it. But the plan right now is to keep the name in place.” And even though the two companies are working on integrating each other’s workforces, Ozguc added that no layoffs are imminent. “That issue has been talked about and decided. Yahoo did not acquire this company to lay people off.”
- In: Applications | microsoft | Yahoo
- 1 Comment
Wall street journal is reporting that Yahoo’s board plans to reject Microsoft’s bid. WSJ is still paid, so below is what Bloomberg has to say.
I can’t say whether its undervalued or not, but Yahoo’s brand would definitely get diluted with microsoft’s acquisition.
Yahoo! Inc., the world’s second most popular Internet search engine, plans to reject Microsoft Corp.’s $44.6 billion unsolicited takeover offer, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.
The board decided the price “massively undervalues” the Sunnyvale, California-based company, and Yahoo may face risks because regulators could oppose the combination, the newspaper said today. On Feb. 1, Microsoft offered $31 a share in cash and stock for Yahoo. The company wants at least $40, or more than $12 billion more than Microsoft offered, the Journal said.
Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang, who said this week that Yahoo is examining its options, may consider a partnership with bigger rival Google Inc. or ways to wrest a higher offer from Microsoft. Yahoo’s failure to crack Google’s dominance in search led to eight straight profit declines and cut the stock’s value in half in the two years before the offer.
“Yahoo still has one of the largest brands on the Internet,” Bill Tancer, general manager at researcher Hitwise Pty. in San Francisco, said in an interview before the report. “It confines Google to continue to grow their revenue from a single revenue stream, which is search.”
Yahoo directors, who met over the past week to weigh the offer, will send a letter to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft on Monday that outlines its position, the Journal said.
“The board is continuing to evaluate the proposal,” Yahoo spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said today after the report. “We’re not commenting beyond that.” Microsoft spokesmen Frank Shaw and Bill Cox didn’t immediately return calls.
Higher Bid
Yahoo is betting Microsoft won’t take hostile measures to win the bid, the Journal said, even though the software maker has indicated that is a possibility. A person familiar with the matter said this week that Microsoft may seek to oust Yahoo board members should they reject its offer.
“Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal,” Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer said in a letter to Yahoo’s board that was made public on Feb. 1.
Yahoo rose 16 cents to $29.20 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and Microsoft added 44 cents to $28.56.
The offer is 62 percent more than Yahoo’s stock price before the bid. The shares have climbed above the value of the cash-and- stock bid, showing shareholders expect a higher price. Microsoft plans to let investors choose cash or stock, at a ratio that will end up being about 50-50.
$34 to $37
Microsoft shares have declined since the bid, lowering the value of the stock portion and pushing the total value of the deal to about $29.08 a share. Microsoft may have to bid $34 to $37, said UBS AG’s Heather Bellini, the top-ranked software analyst by Institutional Investor magazine.
Since the bid is half cash and half stock, Microsoft may fix the offer at $31 before pursuing an increase, so the value doesn’t decline with its shares, she said.
Yahoo is getting financial advice from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Moelis & Co., according to two people familiar with the matter. Spokespeople for Goldman and Lehman declined to comment and a Moelis representative didn’t immediately return a phone call.
Morgan Stanley and Blackstone Group LP are counseling Microsoft.
Google Possibility
Yang, 39, has resisted letting go of the company he co- founded in 1995 as a graduate student at Stanford University. Initially a way to help people find their favorite places on the Web, Yahoo became the most-visited U.S. Internet site by combining search, news, sports and finance in a single place.
He replaced Terry Semel as chief in June after Yahoo’s share of Web searches tumbled and the company lost sales of banner ads.
Yahoo might seek help from rivals, soliciting other bids or seeking partnerships with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. or Google to thwart Microsoft, according to analysts including Stanford Group Co.’s Clayton Moran.
The New York Times reported Feb. 4 that Google CEO Eric Schmidt contacted Yang to suggest a partnership between their companies. A partnership with Google may allow Yahoo to outsource its search service, shedding the costs of running its own search engine and sharing ad revenue with its larger rival.
Google spokesman Matt Furman didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail today seeking comment.
Regulatory Scrutiny
While a search and advertising partnership with Google is an option, it would face stiff regulatory scrutiny, Moran said. News Corp. isn’t interested in bidding for Yahoo, Murdoch said on a Feb. 4 conference call. That means Yang’s options probably won’t pan out, said Andrew Frank, a New York-based analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.
The U.S. Justice Department is “interested” in reviewing the antitrust implications of a Yahoo-Microsoft transaction, agency spokeswoman Gina Talamona said last week. Neelie Kroes, commissioner of competition for the European Commission, said her agency also would scrutinize a deal.
Google has grown faster than Microsoft in every quarter since Google’s 2004 initial public offering as its search engine won more users. Even after CEO Steve Ballmer’s efforts to build a new search engine from scratch, Google outsold Microsoft in Internet ads by 7-to-1 in Microsoft’s latest fiscal year.
Microsoft and Yahoo combined would still fail to seize the lead in Internet search. Google, based in Mountain View, California, got 56 percent of U.S. Web queries in December, which is almost double Yahoo and Microsoft’s shares together, according to New York-based Nielsen Online.
Microsoft and Yahoo! have been struggling ,as we all know, to monetize the real estate of the Internet World, i.e the Page Views. Where Microsoft lost about 250M$ in the online business last quarter, Yahoo also suffered a 23% drop in their net earnings in the same quarter. It’s not that these giants don’t know the business, they just seem helpless especially since they have no share in the strongest online business value chain, i.e. the Search. No wonder google still raked in a kewl 17% increase in their annual revenue.
While Microsoft was busy writing petitions against a possible buyout of double click by Google, Yahoo was busy firing its employees and trying to lower the opex to show healthy earnings to its investors
But Investors are smart and they can clearly see the Armageddon. They know that Dinosaurs did extinct and so can Yahoo.
But was Yahoo sleeping the whole time? No
Jerry Yang,Mr Yahoo, tried to reinvigorate life back in Yahoo management by calling a 100 day management review last year in July. Here’s a presentation
Irony is that do u really need a 100 days to identify a disease that has such visible side effects. When you don’t have a share in the Search market, no matter if your clicking Trillion page views you just cant make money. For the four weeks ending in January 2008, Google accounted for 65.98% of U.S. searches, while Yahoo! and Microsoft combined amounted to just 27.84% of searches.
The second big question for Yahoo has been how to enter the SNS market. But Can you really sell the concept of making money by doing SNS now to Investors, NO? You could have 2 yrs back,but you wont have the back of your investors to invest into the SNS space especially When Google’s struggling to monetize their Myspace inventory
So does this mean the quest to make money on Social networking sites is never ending?
Well Microsoft seems to think otherwise, especially since they’ve been acting happy about their investment and the advertising deal with Facebook. Hmmmmm……
Does all this hint that Google is the Achilles with out the week heel ?
O Sorry, not yet the Giants are trying their Last move…..lets wait until then…
Here’s more stuff for you to munch on the deal: Cnet
Social networking is one of the biggest and fastest-evolving phenomena on the Web, and Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Yahoo will undoubtedly send it in new directions. More than anything, a MSFT-YHOO acquisition will shake up the debate over just how you can make money off a Facebook or MySpace.com–because they’re running out of time to figure that out.
Should the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition go through, expect them to try to corner the social-network advertising market.
The common wisdom is that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo is a real force in social networking. Both companies own multiple social media properties, and the only resounding success among them is Yahoo’s Flickr. (Sorry, Microsoft, I’m not counting the Zune’s “song-squirting.”) “They’re very interested in the space,” Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said in an interview with CNET News.com. “They haven’t been able to get traction in it. They look at it very longingly.”
Social networking, in addition, will be a tasty slice of the Web for a hypothetical Microsoft-Yahoo because it’s also one of the few niches of the Web on which Google doesn’t already have a stranglehold. Its OpenSocial developer initiative isn’t ready yet, its Orkut social network has only gained traction in a few regions of the globe, and the company admitted in its recent quarterly earnings call that social advertising (specifically on News Corp.’s MySpace) isn’t bringing home the bacon.
Taking the reins on the advertising market is probably the best way for Microsoft-Yahoo to make waves in social networking without actually launching a big social-media initiative–and I certainly hope they don’t try to, because there are way too many networks out there already. Microsoft already has a foot in the door with its $240 million stake in Facebook. (Yahoo tried to acquire it outright in 2006 and was promptly spurned.) And Facebook’s own Social Ads were met with high-profile opposition and plenty of bad press.
With Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s resources pooled, the two companies could devise a more effective social advertising strategy (if such a thing is even possible). Even if it’s dubious in its effectiveness, expect it to be very high profile. Think about it: Microsoft-Yahoo could claim they’re doing what Google couldn’t do. How’s that for instilling confidence?
“A potential acquisition, if it actually goes through, could be a much, much more interesting player for Facebook to want to do business with,” Li said, noting that Facebook’s current deal with Microsoft only covers display advertisements, not search ads. “If Microsoft and Yahoo can actually make a play in search, that makes Facebook a lot more comfortable going with an all-Microsoft deal and maybe even be acquired by it. Who knows?”
But beyond advertising, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo has a massive social-networking tool at its fingertips, Li continued. “Yahoo and Microsoft both have this wonderful asset called e-mail address books and instant-messaging buddy lists, which are essentially a social graph,” she said. “A lot of people are using those services, much more so than Gmail, for example, and so that’s an instant social graph.”
NotchUp: A brilliant Jobsearch Startup with an Idea that’ll change the Business Value Chain
Posted on: January 23, 2008
- In: Company | Funding | Jobsearch | Startup
- 6 Comments
Here’s a niche but a brilliant idea that in my view will create a whole new layer in the existing Online Jobsearch value chain
Founded by two guys, Notchup is trying to expand the target audience for the Jobsearch market. At present, you only enter the world of jobsearch if your looking to move…. but what about the rest of the professionals
Notchup thus is trying to give a reason for all those professionals who are happy in their roles and may be doing well , to come online and to not only make money by charging for being interviewed but also open themselves to some real good opportunities and serious employers
Please find below a review of the site on Techcrunch
The problem with most job sites is that the people companies really want to hire don’t put their resumes on them because they are happy in their current positions. If you are a star manager, chances are your employer knows it and is treating you well so that you don’t even think about leaving. Who wants to bother looking for a job anyway if you don’t have to? That’s right up there with looking for a new house in terms of time-sinks to avoid.
The folks at NotchUp, a stealth startup based in Los Altos, California launching later this month, have a better idea. Founded by two Peerflix refugees, Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis, NotchUp tries to lure talented-but-complacent workers and managers into its recruitment pool by turning the job search on its head. Instead of desperate out-of-work employees going hat-in-hand to companies begging for a job interview, on NotchUp, the companies have to pay to interview you. This is supposed to bring out those passive job seekers every company really wants to find.
The site lets you set whatever price you like per interview, but also provides a calculator that takes into account your current position, experience, education, and salary to come up with a number. What I like about this approach is that it uses economic incentives to try to bring a better inventory of talent onto the market, just like Zillow does with its “Make Me Move” feature that lets people make unsolicited offers on houses that are not officially on the market. If a company is willing to pay you a few hundred or even a thousand bucks just to interview you, chances are they are pretty serious and it is not going to be a waste of time. It acts as a filter for both the employer and the prospective employee.
According to the site, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Powerset are all corporate beta testers using NotchUp for recruitment (well, maybe not Yahoo). NotchUp is still in stealth. The only way to get into the site right now is to be invited by a current user, which is how I learned about it.
Setting up a profile is easy, especially if you already use LinkedIn. NotchUp just imports your LinkedIn profile, you set your price, and you are ready to go. Any friend you refer to the site who gets an interview earns you a 10 percent referral fee. As employers search the site, they can make offers to interview you, which you see in your inbox. You can choose to only get offers from corporations, or from headhunters as well. And you can block recruiters from any particular company (like the one you currently work for) from seeing your profile. The service is free for job seekers, and companies pay NotchUp a fee for each resulting interview.
NotchUp is a really good idea. It turns job hunting into something more people will want to do in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Even if you don’t get the job, you get paid for your time.
- In: Acquisitions | Israel | Music | Yahoo
- Leave a Comment
Rumors popped up here in Silicon Valley that Yahoo is in negotiations to buy Israel-based FoxyTunes.
The Foxytunes core service is a Firefox plugin that allows users to control their favorite media players from the browser. It has a small but loyal following, who also use their tangential services (an email/blog signature tool and FoxyTunes Planet, a site that aggregates music information).
The acquisition makes some sense given Yahoo recent overt signals that they are shaking things up in music. Last week they launched a new, stripped down, easy-to-use web based MP3 player as well. The technology that FoxyTunes has created could certainly be used to further that agenda.
FoxyTunes won’t return emails asking about this. Unsurprisingly, Yahoo also chose not to commentReported on Techcrunch
Yahoo’s Online Music Strategy
Posted on: January 10, 2008
- In: Music
- Leave a Comment
Interesting Article on Yahoo’s Music Strategy on Techcrunch.. Launch of browser based mp3 player by Yahoo I guess is the start of what looks like Yahoo’s mission to make the music world free of DRM
Makes sense too, if you cant be iTunes, do something different i.e. make music free and give users a platform where they have all the information about what music will suit them…….but Can they!
Yahoo is Clearly up to something big around Online music
Michael Arrington
There have been rumors that Yahoo Music is preparing to launch a big new product sometime soon. And when I read this overview
of a presentation given by Yahoo Music’s VP of Product Development Ian Rogers last month it basically confirmed it for me: expect something new and interesting from Yahoo Music in the near future.Some background: Rogers, along with former Yahoo music GM David Goldberg, was one of the first music industry insiders to actively call for the dismantling of the DRM machine (I interviewed both early last year).
Rogers also made an impassioned speech last October calling for sanity in the music industry. “Inconvenience doesn’t scale,” he said. And – suing Napster for popularizing music sharing was “like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.” He ended that talk by saying he wouldn’t let Yahoo spend any more money on flawed music models. He specifically called all-you-can-eat subscription models flawed; and Yahoo is a big provider of that service already.
He went even further in his most recent talk. The first part was a rehashing of previous presentations where he said “we’ve been trying to apply our physical world models to the digital space and then wondering why they don’t work. It’s like trying to live a normal life on the moon without adjusting to the changes in oxygen and gravity.” In one slide he suggests iTunes is nothing more than the application of old business models (represented by spreadsheets) and ownership over music content, resulting in an uninspiring product. People don’t want to just listen to what the record labels say they should listen to. They want to consume the content that people they trust recommend to them.
But he went further this time, saying “We’re in the process of redefining what Yahoo! Music is, and making it the Music destination in Yahoo!’s successful image.” He also says Yahoo isn’t a music retailer and suggests they won’t be in the future.
So what are they up to? He is championing the merger of content (which is what the labels control) with context (all the great user generated content around the passion of music – Last.fm popular songs, MySpace content, blog posts around new music, etc. This is a well of useful contextual information that helps people decide what they want to consume. He calls for the evolution of open standards to facilitate this goal – making media “a first-class object in HTML,” agreeing on ways to describe collections of media objects (playlists), standards for sharing user data, and defining services (search, resolution of media between services, and purchase or provisioning).
It’s clear that Yahoo wants to move in this direction. Their music site consists of great content but, other than the doomed subscription service, lacks any retail features. It’s unlikely Yahoo wants to get into the music sales game. Not only did Rogers say as much in the presentation, but it’s a very low margin business. Instead, and this is just an educated guess, it looks like Yahoo wants to spearhead an effort to create open standards around music buying, playing, managing and sharing. If that wasn’t the direction they were going, the presentation makes little sense.
In one set of slides near the end of the presentation, he shows a use case where a user discovers music on Yahoo, links to purchase it at Amazon, and then manages it again back at Yahoo. My guess is this is exactly what Yahoo will be. They’ll abandon their subscription music service (Rogers previously said the model was deeply flawed and has failed to get many users) and promote third party music download sites like Amazon instead. But I also imagine they’ll do this via a set of open standards where any service can participate. Yahoo is the worlds largest music site, so they can afford to be inclusive. It’s likely they’ll manage to keep their fair share of the users, even in an open world.
Half of me hopes that Yahoo pulls the plug on the project before it launches. What I’d really like to see is Rogers leave Yahoo and create a new startup based on the principles he believes in, without any compromise. Now that could be something interesting.
- In: Music
- 2 Comments
8th Jan , Yahoo unravels a card out of their newly formed music strategy that is being talked about so heavily across blogs……..launches the browser based mp3 player
One more app for all believers of online app’s replacing the desktop.
Also liked the fact that Yahoo utilized the recently made public Wikia search platform to create a wiki for this project……..good going by wikia….
this is clearly just a first step in whatever Yahoo’s grand plans are around the future of their music service
they’ve released some code to embed a very simple Javascript based MP3 player on any website.
The player finds MP3s on a given web page, creates a playlist and a very simple overlay to play the songs. A small play icon is placed next to every MP3 link, and the player itself hovers over the bottom left of the page. It can be expanded to show a playlist of all files on the page (Yahoo is using the XSPF format).
This is clearly just a first step in whatever they’re doing over the long term. There are hints at monetization strategies – file names are linked to Yahoo search, for example.
Here’s how the player looks
New player
January 8, 2008
The second iteration of our browser-based player is coming out in beta today. Here’s how it works:
- Link to MP3s in your web page. These can be anywhere on the web.
- Add a line of code to insert our Javascript library. We host this, so you just have to point to our URL.
- Working play buttons appear next to MP3s.
The first iteration of this project, which we released last summer, enabled playback of 30-second samples and tracks from our own music subscription service on the Yahoo! Music web site. It was our own media and our own site. What’s new is supporting third party media on third party web pages.
The Flash player that we recently released on next.yahoo.net is a sibling. It has many of the same roots, code, and features and it is maintained by the same team. Although they don’t look the same, in a way they are different skins over a single underlying product. Sometimes you need Flash and sometimes you need Javascript, but either way you’re playing the page.
The documentation and community home for the project is a public wiki at Wikia. Why use a wiki for documentation? Because documentation and community are two sides of the same coin, and wikis integrate them. Why go outside of Yahoo for such an important part of our project? The goal is to make the developer community healthier by making it truly independent.
Some things that are interesting about the player:
- The interface between your document and our library is unobtrusive Javascript and semantic HTML: even though our library is Javascript internally, the API is HTML.
- The API is fairly rich. You can set the image we use for album art. You can control the playlist sequence. You can tell us the song title. You can operate in strict mode or quirks mode. To learn more, see How To Link on the wiki.
- We’re creating a new generation of playlist technology by turning the page into a playlist. Our player knits all the songs in the page together so that they play one after the other. The result is continuous play within the hosting web page.
- This is different from a badge in that we don’t provide the content. It doesn’t make sense for these to always be tied together.
- It’s different from a normal library in that users don’t need to install their own copy. This makes it easier for users to adopt, and it allows us to do ongoing maintenance at web speed.
- If you fool around with the player you’ll find that you can click through to a Yahoo! search on the song title. This is a simple and unintrusive way to for us to monetize the traffic, and it keeps our business goals aligned with user needs because the search has to be adding value if we want people to use it.
Our design principle is: we eat the complexity so that you don’t have to. There’s no reason for a user to have to think about syntax for embedding an object. Plain vanilla links to media are all you should need. So I’d say to TechCrunch that we’re up to something small and simple.
Links:
- In: Search
- 3 Comments
Introduction
Wikia Search: Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.
This is what Nikolaj has to say on O’Reilly radar
This morning Jimbo Wales’ Wikia launched their search effort, Wikia Search. Wales & co. have been getting a lot of heat for this launch, most notably from Mike Arrington at Techcrunch who calls Wikia Search “an inexcusable waste of time” and “a complete letdown”.
I have to be honest that my first reaction to Wikia Search was lukewarm, and I fully support Arrington in his assessment that Wikia Search is no viable replacement for Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, or any of the other established search players. But Wales takes out the air of Arrington’s choler by commenting that “it’s a project to *build* a search engine, not a search engine”, recalling that
When I launched Wikipedia, I wrote at the top of the first page “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”. On that day, anyone reviewing it would have laughed. What’s this? There’s nothing here! This is not an encyclopedia, it is an empty website with some funny editing syntax!
Were Wales goes wrong is that Wikia has released a search engine on a limited index with no opportunity for users to contribute. In terms of Wikipedia, it would be the equivalent of launching an out-of-copyright dictionary but giving users no ability to edit the erroneous articles or adding new. Wikia should not have launched without, and that is a mistake.
Yet Wikia will change search. They may very well be run overend by Google, Yahoo!, or Facebook (who eventually will turn towards search like their fraternal predecessor AOL) in the process of doing so, but they’ll change a few rules of the game.
First, values
AOL’s search log blunder was notorious, and generally people are slowly starting to question the potential privacy invasion from our online data trails.
A Wikia employee told me today that people were already asking what the most popular search terms were. He said there was no way of finding out as no logs are kept.
Second, they’ll open search. Really.
Wikia claims that they’ll make their index freely available. If they haven’t already, we’ll almost certainly see Wikia’s index in Amazon’s S3 (Amazon is a major investor), making it effortless to create custom search engines using a couple EC2 instances. Think vertical search engines with custom algorithms for anything from gaming to Japanese manga cartoons. Talk about giving Google’s 16K employee brute-force machine competition.
Go play with Wikia Search. Then come back here and read the above again. Tell me what you see: a bluff or a ripple of change?
Disclosure: Fellow Radar blogger Artur Bergman is Director of Engineering at Wikia, and I’m posting this just a few hundred meters down the road from their Poznan (Poland) office.
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