Mahalo – Social search invented

by Jeff Haynie on May 30, 2007 · Comments

I talk with a number of entrepreneurs on a weekly basis and hear dozens of ideas about the “next big thing” each time. It seems like there’s a new Web2.0 company launching every hour these days and I can hardly keep up with TechCrunch to keep tabs on everything that’s happening. So, generally, when something interesting comes along – it’s a little easier to see – given all the clutter around.

Today was one of those super special days when I heard about a product (via Twitter of course) and instantly got it – and within a few minutes of seeing it and trying it out – got really, really excited. To me, this is the next big thing on the Internet. And, sometimes, it’s the simple ideas that make it.

Jason Calacanis, ex-Netscape fame, and his team today launched Mahalo (Hawaiian for “how may I help you?”). If you use it, you will immediately “get it”. At least, you should.

I think this site has the potential to change the way search works today – much like how google changed search many years ago. Will it change search in a way that will topple the giant? Probably not. Most likely, I predict, this company will be bought in the next 18 months. This is such a great idea – that it will disrupt search as we know it. The idea of human-powered search is so simple, but yet so brilliant.

I’m slightly partial to what they’re doing. Last summer, after the Vocalocity acquisition, Nolan, Jared and I took a few months to experiment with search and social content. It was an area of research that I was particularly interested in and we had a very similar idea (but our implementation of the concept wasn’t nearly as good as Mahalo). We wanted to try and solve the “relevancy” problem. While Mahalo is still a ways away from completing solving that — they’ve done something close. And, with some personalization and social networking capabilities mixed in – you’ll be able to link up your friends and extended network into more friend-based Mahalo “guides”. Imagine “tipping point” roles combined in relevant user-driven, search-based content.

This will be one company and product to watch evolve. And given the team, I’m sure it will be a success.

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  • FWIW, Jeff Bezos is one of the major backers of ChaCha. He was early in Google.
  • Points well given and taken. Maybe the problem is the notion of it being a search engine over a social directory.

    I view this as a more intelligent and practical wikipedia (although the information is somewhat different) than a pure search engine.

    I do think there's value in finding a more well designed place that aggregates useful and verified information in one place (for certain topics) than a pure search engine.

    For example, in research for an article on the IPhone, Mahalo gives me one place to go to find some of the important information and links to resources in one quick find. However, the iphone search at google will give me a less consolidated, less filtered view.

    The scaling problem is a problem for sure, but I think can be also tackled algorithmically over time as well by making the job of creating new information pages and integrating better secondary recommendations from search terms that don't match.
  • 40 people, growing to 100, indexing the entire Web. I fail to see how this effectively scales. IF what GOOG says is true about 20 - 25% of all searchs being unique never seen before search strings, just going after the top 25k most popular terms (which by the way really are not the most popular but what Mahalo deems worthy) just is not going to make this very deep.

    On top of that the serps are a not a step level improvement. Compare the results of a simple search on Apple on GOOG and Mahalo. They are pretty much the same results and not improved enough to change user behavior.

    With all that said this will be very interesting to watch. It is an interesting approach to the problem that I don't want to search, I want to find. Kind of like a contextual search engine where the context is created by humans.
  • I followed ChaCha early on when it launched last year. However, the editorial input isn't really obvious in the results. Quite frankly, I can't tell much difference between a ChaCha results page and one from Google - except that Google is better in my opinion.

    Where I think social networking could play into this over time is when social guides become people part of your social network. Much like del.cio.us has done for social bookmarking. Sure, that's not something that would make sense today - but I can definitely imagine something where some of the content is generated/contributed/rated/etc based not on some "expert" but someone that you give trust to.

    Let me give a simple example. I "trust" Michael Arrington and Om Malik as sources for my Web2.0 news. Are they always perfect? No. Are they sometimes wrapped up in specific geographies (like the valley)? Sure. But, I implicitly given them "trust" - even though neither know me and even though they haven't asked me to give it to them.

    Now, expand that out a bit. I bet everyone has their implicit "trust list" of people they go to based on some implicit expert categorization they do mentally. If you could capture that and the harness the power of this - and combine it with our everyday online (and offline) lives - it would create something very powerful.

    I'll have to create a post dedicate to some of my expanded thoughts around this .... stay tuned.
  • I Don't know... I find myself having a hard time distinguishing it from editor-driven sites such as About.com, Squidoo, or even Wikipedia.

    Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mahalo is bought out -- they look to have a strong brand, the app looks great and is very responsive.

    And if they're going to tap into the tipping point phenomena, they're going to figure out how to establish the editors' reputation and create some sort of social bond between them and users, and it needs to be more than an lonely avatar at the bottom of the page.
  • Check out Cha Cha as well. At first blush, Mahalo seems more interesting to me than Cha Cha because I find it creepy chatting with someone when I'm searching for something.
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