Human-powered search?

Nearly a decade ago, Google brought innovation to the words "internet search" by using pigeons to sort out good search results from the bad ones.

Fast-forward to this decade, and pigeons have evolved to human beings. Enter human-powered search by Mahalo. Though I've known about Mahalo for a while now (thanks to Buzz Out Loud and Jason Calacanis appearing on TWIT every so often!), I've only recently begun to actually start using it, and I'm quite, quite loving it.




Let me start by saying, Mahalo isn't Google. Yes, they are both search services, but Google's a bit more "engine" and Mahalo is a bit more "service."

You see, Mahalo actually pays human beings to write up search entries, and still relies on aggregating search engine results from Google, Yahoo!, del.icio.us and more to give you results for any searches they don't have entries for.

So, say, if you were searching for "Barack Obama" you'd end up with a great looking page full of links, video and information on Mr. Obama like this:



But let's say you were looking for a lesser known somebody, oh say... davidlian... you'd just get a bunch of google links like this:



Of course, if i was a bit hardsell, I could put in a request for Mahalo to write an article about my search topic. This is a bit of interesting interaction that I really found to be unique about Mahalo. Teams of real people would be putting together pages for specific topics and so it ends up becoming a little bit of a cross between Wikipedia and Google. And, if you wanted to be one of those people, its pretty easy to sign up here and get paid.

If you just wanted to get casually involved with the search community at Mahalo, you could alternatively sign up as a member and volunteer links. Each search page entry gives you the option to volunteer links that are relevant to the topic and will be vetted through by Mahalo's team to ensure a better search result for everyone.

I still use Google an awful lot (though I'm more and more going back to Yahoo! now), but Mahalo is also one of the great sites I check out on a daily basis to see the pulse of the internet. The front page changes everyday and though it's a far cry from the minimalistic design of Google, Mahalo manages to deliver important topics on its front page without the clutter of sites like Yahoo!.

More interestingly, I love how Mahalo tries to be more than just a search engine. Stuff like the Mahalo Daily Show by Veronica Belmont means there'll always be meaningful content to discover on Mahalo.

The only drawback is, I can't get over how everytime I punch in David Lian, this dude called David Binn keeps popping up.

You Tube Videocracy: The event no press were invited to

... which made them want in even more.

Funny play on the human psyche this - we want the things we can't get even more, but to go cover a press event? Granted it was an excellent event by an excellent brand and some key announcements were made. Some journo even tried to sneak in and was promptly thrown out.

Well, the news didn't stay quiet for more than 24 hours thanks to Ian Schafer who promptly posted his notes up on his blog.

Personally, it wasn't so much the news that excited me (what's active sharing anyway?) but the manner in which YouTube pulled this event of. It's got me thinking, if we organised a big event here in Malaysia, and "neglected" to invite the press, but made sure we invited loads of industry people (marketing folks, handphone dealers etc.), would that make it even more desireable for press to drop by and cover it.

Something tells me it won't. Ah... the mysteries of life.

Here's a quick video I found of what the event looked like:

Your next ad agency - Google?

*Disclosure - I work for Text 100 on the Nokia account. This blog posting is purely my viewpoint, taken from my knowledge of the industry, without any confidential information.*

"There's money to be made in online advertising," - [random internet company exec]

There was an interesting article today in The Business Times (yes, I read NST) about how Google was seeing a real rosy future in mobile phone advertising. (read it here) Well, this isn't exactly new news per se, but I just really liked the article as it presented a real concise picture of the next step in the convergence of mobility, communications, technology, services and content.

You see, the first problem companies really had with the internet was how to monetize it. Why? Because the internet is used mainly by a bunch of freeloaders who expect and want everything to be free. Yet, even if you're generating be best content in the world, the moment you ask people to pay for it online, you can expect your readership, listenership or viewership to drop to about 10% of what you've got. Wonder how many people would watch YouTube if you had to pay US$1.00 per clip? Uh-huh.

So, advertising has been the way forward for making money on the Internet, and this one company, Google, has gotten pretty good at it. Indeed, when the then leader Yahoo! was floundering, along came Google with AdSense and voila! we discovered the first truly workable internet advertising model. Of course, it helped that AdSense was really Web 2.0-savvy (simple bloggers could just add AdSense and make money) and the blogosphere was in the middle of its boom.

So now, as we're moving on to the next great phase of technology - the mobile internet - it suddenly makes sense that Google would want in on bringing advertising to the fourth screen - your mobile phone (or device or multimedia computer). Tom Merritt once said on Buzz Out Loud (though I forget which episode), that "Google's goal is to advertise to you wherever you are with whatever means possible." Fantastic plan, actually.

However, Google's probably not the only one moving in this direction this time. Microsoft, via its Live services hopes to attract a couple of eyeballs and sell some advertising as well. Yahoo! is shaping up its own internet advertising offering. Both have solid partnerships with handset manufacturers and are developing application suites that may (and I am heavily speculating here) include advertising in the future. Nokia (and this I know for a fact) has already acquired mobile advertising firm Enpocket and a bunch of other services companies like Twango, and more recently Navteq - so you can expect some innovative new ideas on advertising soon. Do you think Apple might consider moving into advertising too?

So here's the big picture, you now have several big companies steeped in devices, software, or services, all moving towards one zone of competition - advertising. As the internet becomes a more powerful medium, this little niche in advertising may one day become the mainstream mode of reaching people (if it hasn't already). What, then, do you call companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Nokia? Ad agencies?