Mahalo going after WikiPedia
Written on January 6, 2008 – 4:03 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Mahalo launched a new toolbar and introduced user created stubs yesterday. Users have always been able to post links to Mahalo. Now they can even build their pages themselves or collectively.
Users can create pages called “stubs” just like on Wikipedia. Mahalo didn’t bother to come up with a new name for their user generated pages which makes sense because most people understand “stubs”. Google came up with “Knol”, their own definition of a “stub”.
If you abuse Mahalo Stubs by spamming or inserting only your own links your account will be banned. Someone apparently will be checking all the Stubs. I wonder how spamproof & scalable this will be. As Mahalo grows it will become more and more interesting to start your own Mahalo ‘ShareTheLove’ linkfarm.
One interesting note: there is no word about these new features on the official Mahalo blog yet. Instead, the announcement was made on Calacanis’ personal blog and to his 5000+ Mahalo Twitter followers. It is sort of a open/closed beta launch I guess…
There is a large collection of Mahalo Stubs here:
http://www.mahalo.com/Category:User_Created_Stubs
One example:
http://www.mahalo.com/Apple_Rumors
I hope you like that post!
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By Patrick on Jan 7, 2008 | Reply
Calacanis is saying that It is not going after wikipedia on his twitter profile:
http://twitter.com/JasonCalaca...../568891822
By Dirk van der Heijden on Jan 9, 2008 | Reply
The Mahalo ’stubs’ are an interesting attempt to provide user generated starting pages on any particular subject. In ’stealth mode’, our Dutch startup is currently doing the same. We do believe to add additional value by organizing and rating entries, user interaction, and (automatically filtered) news. We kindly invite you to visit http://www.gemzies.com , and send us your comments! Our garage-type startup does plan to take it up against multi million dollar ventures in this area (we plan for a press release by end of January).