I told both Jason and CK awhile back that I'd pass along my thoughts. I wanted to sit back for awhile and watch how things all started to develop before offering up anything.There are two users to a search engine. You have the person searching for information, and you have the person providing the information. In the case of Mahalo, the first use-case I get. Curated, edited, focused information that I'm looking for. In fact, I had my first Mahalo moment while searching for information on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and Mahalo was a big help. Awesome.
But when Dave Winer mentioned that Jason didn't bring a Win-Win to Gnomedex, it struck me as the words that I was looking for to describe the second use-case, although he probably meant his words in a little bit different context.
The second use-case falls flat on its ass. There is currently zero incentive for a blog author/content producer to support Mahalo. On Google, the value proposition is clear -- the more people a producer suggests to Google, the more people who are using it. The more people who are using it, the more traffic the producer's site ultimately gets. Yes, some people cheat and get more traffic than they should, but ultimately everyone has a chance to receive "votes" by way of organic links. It's a classic win win.
When Mahalo first launched with curated results, the existence of this proposition was at least debatable. Google backfill kept the basics of a search engine in play. Now that Mahalo is producing original content instead of SeRPs, however, it isn't really a search engine, but a knowledge base. From a content producer's point of view, why on earth would they want to contribute pagerank/trust rank/support to something that will ultimately overtake their keywords and traffic on Google? The slightest change in the rankings can dramatically affect a sites ad sales/conversions/whatever. Supplemental information makes sense I suppose, it's just like linking to a blog post. But again, that's seems like an awkward conflict of interest in the role of a search engine.
Remember when Google started giving their properties premium placement in the SeRPs? The damn near riot that almost ensued? People were grabbing pitch forks and lighting torches chanting "do no evil". That's nothing compared to the outrage people would have if Google started indexing their own open-ended random content on all subjects ahead of their second group of users, the content producers.
Mahalo will probably succeed with whatever Jason does. Answers.com, about.com, wikipedia, etc are all really popular high traffic sites. They just all happen to also be incredibly boring. If Mahalo wants to be exciting and redefine search (which seems to be J's stated goal), then it needs to create a win-win for the people who are building out the rest of the web. Figure that out, and Mahalo stands a chance to really help a lot of people.
UPDATE: In fairness, I should note that while sitting here thinking about the win-win comment, I saw the mahalo "how to write a resume" link scroll by on delicious. Talk about putting it all into context ;)
UPDATE #2: Both Jason and CK respond in the comments.
Comments...
(Page 1)1. Interesting write up, however, I think your "flat on its ass" conclusion is wrong and missing something.
We have a Recommend Links section and Discussion Board for every page of the site, including the how-tos, so every producer of content on the web can recommend their own work to be added if we overlooked it. You can look at many of our pages Recommended Links section to see links that people have suggested that have been added to the page. In your update example at the end of this post, you'll notice if you look at our How to Write a Resume page, that we have a lot of outbound links throughout the how-to. We may have more content, but I'd also say our content is more aware of linking out to more information that most how-tos and more open to input and advice from producers of content than other search engines and services, without the risk of gaming the system that those other services are expose to.
3:20PM on Aug 16th 2007 by C.K.
2. CK,
Fair enough, and yes, there is a ton of outbound content on Mahalo (of which, Emurse is one, and we're thankful).
I guess it's just, in terms of measuring the expectations of a search engine, and in light of the "how to make a win/win" / "build a platform" discussion, it seems like it truly could be drastically improved (imo, of course).
Think of it like this... If google started a blog that wrote original content based off their popular search queries, then replaced the first screen of their results with their own blog post in its entirety instead of a traditional SeRP, how do you think Engadget would feel towards google when someone searched for "iphone review?" Would they consider that to be a win/win? Would they be more or less likely to offer distribution to googles products?
In Mahalo's case, the answer might not be to ditch original content (its really really cool to have it for the primary user, the searcher), but to think of building the platform in ways to extend the interactivity with the content producer. As you mentioned, suggested links, etc. are there, but will that be enough to drive search engine traffic? It would seem that it's a pretty secondary role. I could be wrong of course, I have no idea of the actual traffic patterns you guys have.
Jason and I traded a few emails over it last night, and I do have some thoughts and ideas on possibilities. This feedback isn't intended to be an unnecessary slam, and if I can think of constructive, concrete suggestions, I'll certain share them. As of now, it's just my honest feedback/thoughts.
Thanks for taking the time...
A
3:27PM on Aug 16th 2007 by Alex Rudloff
3. The future of search is adding editorial to it... context, curation, basic content, etc. We're not looking to compete with publishers, and frankly we will never be able to since our focus is on evolving search.
My guess is 10% of what we do is editorial/content and 90% of it is search results. That 10% however will really help people save time and get to information quicker.
Mahalo's main focus is the users, not site owners. Our advice to site owners is to make AMAZING content and tell us about it. If the content is amazing we will include, if it's not amazing we wont. If it's debatable we will have an open and honest debate.
Good site owners win in Mahalo's world and "ok" and bad sites lose--big time! And this bad to average sites SHOULD be ignored. Mahalo is about point to the excellent stuff, and excellence is fairly obvious (as is bad stuff). The fact is, the people doing great stuff don't come up in the top searches as much as they should... we solve that problem.
Google and Yahoo give you the OK to good web, we give you the good to amazing web. That's really the difference.
Frankly, site owners shouldn't be wasting their time trying to impact a search engine... they should be spending their time trying to impact their users!
In fact, I don't think Mahalo has to appeal to site owners in order to win. Engadget, Wikipedia, NYT, Wikihow, etc. are concerned with their users NOT site owners. The site owners experience is not as important as the experience for users.
If we catered to site owners could we create some "marketing/gaming traffic" like netscape, digg, reddit, dmoz, etc. have? Sure... but who cares about that traffic based on folks trying to promote themselves. I'm interested in the traffic that comes from HELPING PEOPLE.
It's a longer and harder road to travel, but we have time.
best j
4:01PM on Aug 16th 2007 by Jason
4. I totally get that, and as we discussed last night, I think we agree more than not.
But this is in context to answering the question posed on your blog "how would we make mahalo a platform?" People searching for material are not the people who are going to be consuming APIs. Content producers are, and thats still (imho) missing the correct proposition.
If you guys can think through something to make it worth their while to support, then it truly does become a win-win. If you're competing with the producers, then it's going to be especially tough. (insert search engine vs. knowledge base debate here)
4:23PM on Aug 16th 2007 by Alex Rudloff