From the Wikia Search emailing list:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jason McCabe Calacanis <jason@calacanis.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:13 PM
Subject: [Search-l] Why did Search Wikia Fail, where did it succeed?
To: Mailing list for Search Wikia <search-l@wikia.com>Friends,
I’m thinking of writing up a recap of what went well with Wikia search (nutch/lmprovements) and what didn’t.
Was wondering if in the spirit of disclosure those involved would give a public (or private) accounting… Jason@calacanis.com
Also, Mahalo has some open crawl interest and would love to host this list If it is going to get shut down. Perhaps we should move to a google group before it does?
Note: not looking for Jimmy Wales bashing–just lessons learned.
Best j
No comment. Actually, that’s a lie: how about that stupid email list? I emailed Jimbo and his sidekick and offered them MetaMojo.com (which I pretty much discontinued to focus on WatchMojo.com, wisely), which was based on Nutch/Lucene and they could not even explain what they were up to.
Wales might be a God for investing Wikipedia, but this search project has disaster written all over it. More on Wikisearchwhatever and Mahalo here.
Last year, just as I was making preparations to attack the biggest bird I had ever come across (ie. before Christmas), Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales said that he would create a Google killer.
One year has passed, with plenty of hyperbole and ridicule, mixed in with impatience and Wikia-confusion, but it looks like the time is nigh (given the emphasis on the word “private” I wasn’t gonna post this, but indeed this email is public, ’tis the actual beta that is meant to remain private, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la):
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com>
Date: Dec 23, 2007 10:04 PM
Subject: [Search-l] private pre-alpha invites available
To: “search-l@wikia.com” <search-l@wikia.com>Ping me if you want one…. we’re launched.
I’m going to be letting people in slowly over the next few days and we
are aiming for a January 7th public launch. We want to run over the
system with help from people to complain about what is broken…Best way to ask is by email, but please don’t be offended if I don’t
answer right away. I am expecting a bit of a flood here.–Jimbo
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See our previous coverage here: Can a For-Profit Search Engine Be Too Open and Transparent to Succeed?
Here’s a Prediction for 2008: a Google shuffle is around the corner and the one most affected will be Wikipedia.org’s results.
More coverage around the Web on the usual suspects:
We started the Crazy Post of the Day last week, then stopped, we’re bringing back today (no sense in forcing a winner if nothing really stands out), but today we got a good one, all in one line, from Tech Crunch:
I love Wikia - CEO Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, says he works harder than anyone in Silicon Valley at building his startup. I routinely point out to him that his startup doesn’t actually do anything - their wiki software is based on the open source MediaWiki project, Google, Looksmart and FM Publishing handle all the revenue via ad sales, and their users create every drop of content on the site. All he has to do is make sure the lights stay on.
That’s crazy. See previous Crazy Posts of the Day here (#2 remains tops, all time, hands down).
PLAY
