Jason Calacanis has started a new pet project which he is determined to drive to the scale of the Yahoo, Google or Microsoft search in the area of web information categorization. It’s the Mahalo Project.
The case apparently seems to be simple: There are lots of algorithm based search engines that, thanks to all the SEOs, you get a lot of junk which isn’t meant to be there. We are starting to slowly see a reliving moment of how the web used to be till Google came along and put things in some sort of order. It might all be unravelling back to chaos yet again. [Needless to say, Jason calls all these SEO optimizers by very interesting and radical names – none of which are pleasant.]
Mahalo aims to sort through information for 10,000 of the top keywords, using people. Their task is to look up for specific and accurate information using google or any search engine, create the page and then manage it. It’s going to be a full-strength manual work involved here. Apparently with the venture already funded with Sequoia, the concept has gained steam and is already available in some format – though nowhere close to the envisioned experience.
Jason is also looking at crowdsourcing the entire deal, so that individuals can take up work, to create such pages with accurate information. They get paid for doing that.
Now, crowds of people contributing.. hmm… where does that sound familiar. Yep, Wikipedia. It is a well known fact that Jimmy Wales is working on a search engine project named Wikia. The correlation between Wikipedia and Wikia is that they’d both be contributed by the general public of users and consumers. Given the success of Wikipedia and the learnings in managing and stabilizing the quality of the content, the same can be put to very good use within Wikia.
So the question remains, Is Jason Calacanis going after Jimmy’s Project? And if this is the sort of future we are looking at, ventures which to leverage the “human” aspect and touch, what is the possibility of opportunities that countries such as china and India bear, with that context?
- Launching an Experiment to Spot Problems Worth Solving - November 2, 2015
- Introducing In50hrs Healthcare Edition - May 14, 2014
- Ideas Pitched / Prototyped at In50hrs Pune 5 - September 16, 2013
Vijay
“I am not sure if one can afford to be picky as to being context and culture sensitive. It has to be general information.
”
What is general info for American is not so general for Indian or Chinese .every search start for a curiosity and what trigger curiosity ?? your surrounding and your context . isn’t it ? BTW i think you would like to see this video of Jason talking about Mahalo
http://revision3.com/gigaom/seconds
Krish,
“The computer’s routine never varies: grab an instruction from memory and execute it; repeat until something makes you stop.
If you sort cards long enough and fast enough will a brand-new conscious mind (somehow) be created? This is, in effect, what *cognitivists* believ
”
this is because whatever computer do is bounded by limit of variance you Choose to introduce in Algorithms , there are some technical limit on the variance . why ?? because of finite set of input value generated by algo , lack of proper reference for random number generator . Ever heard of Monte Carlo Engine ? it is limited by all these constraints but still its widely accepted to give approximately right result .
Now some folks says that we should use Human Intelligence through human operator because we are not able to embbed it in algo . sounds cool but how do these guys insure that all human exploit it ? isn’t the interpretation of data by human [or cognition ] depend on Knowledge , exposer, training , culture etc . these factors are implict constraints which comes with using human operators . effect of these constraints are similar [or perhapses more ] damaging to end result than constraint imposed by algorithmic approach .
[like in potrait of “Angel & Devil ” by M.C.Escher ]
incase of algorithmic approach at least there is a way to know it and account for it . my point is variance is not that easy to ensure and aggregate in human operator scenario too.,
My $0.02
Great topic, Vijay.
Harking back to humans theory seems more likely. More than revelling on the pure human engagement advantage, it’s the level of profundity amongst the involved crowd that will matter. Somewhere down the line, at least in the realm of interpretation of context, algorithms will have to give way for the significantly versatile faculties human mind. The wikipedia success is indeed a resounding vote in its favor – in fact it endorses the method of refinement of context, the way it should be.
Many theories in AI also support this conjecture. One of the most authoritative that I instantly recall is by Prof. David Gelernter of Yale. I quote him here –
“Of course, we can’t know literally what it’s like to be a computer executing a long sequence of instructions. But we know what it’s like to be a human doing the same. Imagine holding a deck of cards. You sort the deck; then you shuffle it and sort it again. Repeat the procedure, ad infinitum. You are doing comparisons (which card comes first?), data movement (slip one card in front of another), and so on. To know what it’s like to be a computer running a sophisticated AI application, sit down and sort cards all afternoon. That’s what it’s like.
The computer’s routine never varies: grab an instruction from memory and execute it; repeat until something makes you stop.
If you sort cards long enough and fast enough will a brand-new conscious mind (somehow) be created? This is, in effect, what *cognitivists* believe.”
No wonder why Gelernter sees himself as a card carrying member of the *anti-cognitivists* club 🙂
“now your reamark about opportunity for India and [god forbid ] china is little strange . because search is a very context sensitive thing and folks in India can’t understand the context of search being carried out in US ,let alone rating the search result . look at todays top search keyword in Google Trend , its Lunar Eclipse in Hawwaii ,now where will you find people who can judge the quality of article on hawaii, lunar eclipse etc . god save if someone search for James dean and Bernhard Goetz,spaghetti sauce etc .”
Prashant,
Well, you might be right and I could be wrong, but from what I have been reading and from the conversations I’ve been having, what Mahalo is, is more of a list of popular keywords on the web. It could be basic “facts” that everyone and anyone would look for. When he is looking for a very niche segment of 10,000 keywords, I am not sure if one can afford to be picky as to being context and culture sensitive. It has to be general information.
He is not using amazon turk or anything. they are opening up a direct mechanism. They are ofcourse validating each and every applicant – which is why they would want a direct hand in picking the guys than anything.
I would say, if you can aptly use google, then you can contribute.
This whole story kinda reminds me of the yahoo days when the two founders essentially were putting together of lists of resources on the web categorized by topics of interest, which essentially transpired to become the search engine that exists today. perhaps its all going back to its roots once again.
Good point Prashant.
wikia and Mahalo are community based searches thats ok but they are not competing . their approach is diffrent.
i think wikia is more on the line of wikipedia where emphasis will be on maintaining a primary index of content which is approved by Community . so it will be more suitable for certain things like research , reference, educational material , if you need a a concise time line of development for any subject . wikia will be suitable .
where as Mahalo will most probably a won’t maintain an index on their own they may maintain a collection of Book mark which is keyword Tagged and rated by community . chances are that they may use something like Technorati APIs or Google Alert like service in backend to fetch the latest links with keyword .
I Think jason will use Amazon Mechanical Turk for crowd sourcing the search .
now your reamark about opportunity for India and [god forbid ] china is little strange . because search is a very context sensitive thing and folks in India can’t understand the context of search being carried out in US ,let alone rating the search result . look at todays top search keyword in Google Trend , its Lunar Eclipse in Hawwaii ,now where will you find people who can judge the quality of article on hawaii, lunar eclipse etc . god save if someone search for James dean and Bernhard Goetz,spaghetti sauce etc .
chances are that probably all the initial user of such search engines will be from US . so these 10K Keyword will be very American .so there is hardly any chance to capitalized on this opportunity .