Written on March 8, 2008 – 12:03 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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These days everybody is talking about the ‘open’ trend on the web. So do I, since it’s huge. Yet I also notice another trend: finding similar persons. It looks like people finally discovered that the web is an ideal medium to meet like-minded people. Last week I discussed matching service Lovest.at, today it’s all about a German service that turn search engines into meetingplaces: andUnite.
The service launches in an English and German version tonight, and by then you’ll be able to find people with similar interests, based on your search terms. You can sign up (anonymously), install a plug-in that creates a social overlay on Google & Co and the service automatically starts collecting your search terms. The advantage for the founders is obvious: valuable information. Yet what’s in it for us?
I’ve asked co-founder Bernd Storm van‘s Gravesande: “Christian Schmidkonz and me were both frustrated with the boring and lonely process of web search. We thought that it would be always more useful to be able to ask someone who knows something about a problem or question instead of browsing though pages and pages of more or less interesting search result links. We thought that the value of a search term must be much higher than just being used for retrieving links from a database.”
Bernd and Christian were also curious what happened when they’d collect search terms in a profile: “Would the collection really represent our interests or even characters? And would we be able to get to know interesting people if we match our profile with the profiles of others? So, basically we started with an experiment but already with the first prototype it turned out to be a intriguing and addictive tool we created.”
“Most people don’t want to change their favorite search engine.”
They hired Christoph Fuchs, a ‘highly talented’ student, to help them developing the service. Now, it’s all about promoting their special concept. “We have to convince the users every day, that andUNITE offers a unique service which is not only useful but also fascinating and as already mentioned addictive.”
AndUnite immediately reminded me of Jimmy Wales’ plans to build a Google-killing social search engine. So far, people don’t seem to be really excited about Wikia Search. Why would andUnite do any better? Bernd: “Well, Jimmy Wales tries to set up a completely new search engine where users have to participate actively in the so-called social part of Wikia in order to make it lively. With andUNITE we sit on top of Google, Yahoo! or Live. We think that this approach will be more successful because most people don’t want to change their favorite search engine.” (more…)
Written on January 7, 2008 – 9:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After waiting for a year, it finally happened today: Jimmy Wales launched an alpha version of Wikia Search. After such a long wait, people have high expectations. Unfortunately, Wales didn’t manage to live up to them. TechCrunch’s Micheal Arrington called it ‘one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing’ and ‘an inexcusable waste of time’. Stan Schroeder from Mashable wasn’t very pleased either: “Wikia Search looks like something that was cooked by two guys in one month in a basement”.
“We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it.”
We interviewed Wales last weekend, and he sounded a bit like he knew what was coming. Wales: “The social network we’ll launch on Monday is just a project to build a search engine. We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it. This is just the beginning. We expect it will take at least two years before we have Google- and Yahoo quality.”
When that time comes, Wales expects people will switch to his engine: “It’s very easy for people to switch from one search engine to another. If we do a good job I’m not too worried that they will switch to ours.”
The positive attitude of Wales has been rewarded before, yet it’s still a huge challenge to compete with Google. Doesn’t it need some hash promotion techniques? When suggesting that Wikia Search could take advantage of the Wikipedia pages always showing up in the top results, Wales answers determined: “No no, Wikipedia has absolutely nothing to do with Wikia Search”.
“I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
With that in mind, it sounds even harder to reach the audience. Wales however, doesn’t seem to worry about it: “I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
I must admit though, that the plans of Wales and his team sound revolutionary. For instance, by keeping the code of Wikia Search open source, they give other search services and organizations the opportunity to create the perfect search engine together. This sounds logical when you take in account that Wales thinks search won’t be competitive element anymore. Wales: “Good quality search is becoming a commodity item. The search quality of Google, Yahoo and Ask are actually very similar. So the idea that Google is some kind of technological powerhouse, is actually not longer true.”
Bringing the social aspect into search successfully is something we haven’t seen yet. Though the social network they have on-line now isn’t very spectacular, the promises for the future sound good. “One of the weaknesses of current search engines is that their algorithms take a long time picking up new good sites. If you look at the way Google ranks sites, it all depends on the number of important sites that link to you. In our project, it takes only one community member that finds a good new site and lets the community know. That will affect the ranking immediately.”
But what happens if a large company tells its 500 employees to give their corporate site a ‘thumbs up’ on the Wikia search engine? Isn’t that a big threat for the validity of the search results? Wales: “That remark is very similar to questions that people would have about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. It’s very difficult to fool a community. Ranking a search result is a public act, so people can see what you’re doing and will rank the contribution very low.”
“We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent”
Sounds like Wales is actually planning on competing with Google. “As with every open source project, we will have a high number of languages covered. We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent.” Did he receive any reactions from Google HQ? Wales: “I see the Google guys socially from time to time and told them about the search plans. But they didn’t give a real reaction yet.”
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