If you are like me the first place you search for something is using Google, but there is a new spin on search that is worth watching. It is called Mahalo and is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. These Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.
Mahalo now has pre-prepared pages for 5,000 terms related to entertainment, travel, health, technology and other subject areas. The company plans to expand its coverage to 10,000 terms by year-end, and eventually to provide results for one-third of the most common search terms.
The company is financed by Sequoia Capital, which knows something about the search business: It was an early backer of both Yahoo and Google. Sequoia, like other Silicon Valley venture capital firms, offers experienced entrepreneurs an office and salary to figure out an idea for a new start-up. It was while he was an entrepreneur in residence that Jason Calacanis had the inspiration for Mahalo. Mr. Calacanis, 36, published The Silicon Alley Reporter in the mid-1990s and went on to be a co-founder of Weblogs, a federation of blogging sites that was sold to AOL in 2005 for about $25 million. He took up residence at Sequoia in December 2006, founded Mahalo and gathered two rounds of financing, including backing from the News Corporation.
If you search for a term they have indexed this is what you will see. I searched for the new Apple “iPhone”:
The Mahalo Top 7
- Apple: iPhone
- Engadget: The Apple iPhone
- Wikipedia: iPhone
- CNET: iPhone Review
- Engadget: Apple announces third-party software details for iPhone
- Macworld: Apple unveils iPhone
- CBS News: A Closer Look at the iPhone
iPhone Recent News
- Engadget: Apple announces third-party software details for iPhone
- Google News: iPhone Last 3 headlines
- CNN.com: Apple iPhone launch date set
- Orlando Sentinel: Industry rivals scramble to answer iPhone’s buzz
- Time: Apple’s New Calling: The iPhone
- BusinessWeek: The Real Genius of Apple’s iPhone
- Topix.net: iPhone News Search
- Wall Street Journal: BlackJack Beats Out Palm 750, iPhone May Well Top Both
- Engadget: iPhone to ship on June 29th at 6pm
- The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): Apple announces 3rd parties can write Web 2.0 apps for iPhone
iPhone Information and Reviews
- MacWorld: iPhone
- Fast Company Magazine: Deconstructing the iPhone slideshow
- The New York Times: “Some Hands-On Time With the iPhone”
- AskTog: The iPhone User Experience
- ZDNet: Apple iPhone Review
iPhone Video
- Apple: iPhone TV Ads
- Apple: iPhone: A Guided Tour
…and much, much more. If you search for something they have not indexed such as “Mount Everest” you will see the following:
Oops! We haven’t hand-written a result page for “mount everest” yet. Why?
Notify me when Mahalo creates a result page for “mount everest”
Related Result Pages from Mahalo
More results from our friends at Google:
//0) { document.getElementById(”googleresults”).style.display = “inline”; } } //]]>
Mount Everest – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mount Everest or Qomolangma or Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा) or Chomolungma (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) pronounced as (Jongmalunga) is the highest mountain on …
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest
Everest – Mount Everest by climbers, news
Everest. MountEverest.net by climbers. The world’s premier source for Everest and Himalaya Expeditions. Latest news on all expeditions.
www.mounteverest.net
www.mounteverest.net/
You will find important links to the Mt Everest region, high altitude awareness and mountaineering Nepal.
www.mnteverest.net
If you are interested in discussing any of these ideas please call me at 604-618-5512 in Vancouver or anywhere in North America at 800-568-8338 or email me at marketingguy@shaw.ca.
Twitter.com/goodideas
