Bessed Versus Wikiasari

So there’s been a big hubbub this week about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales getting ready to launch a new search engine, thus far dubbed Wikiasari, although that will not be its name in the end. It’s unclear exactly what Wales envisions for Wikiasari, in fact he doesn’t seem quite clear on it himself, but the obvious conclusion is that he wants to get volunteer users to help create search engine results in the same way that volunteers now create Wikipedia.

With Bessed having just begun and having a different but still-in-the-ballpark model, I thought I’d look at what we are doing in comparison to what Wikiasari may be doing, and the pros and cons of each.

Bessed is built on WordPress. We “seed” topics/keyword phrases with a few good sites and invite site visitors to add more sites, dis the listed sites, or just add their two cents via comments at the bottom of the search page. If we haven’t yet created a topic, the visitor can suggest it and we will go ahead and start the new topic. There is no charge to be listed.

Bessed is not a wiki; visitors can not physically make changes, but their comments are publicly made and publicly responded to. In the end, however, our editors make the final conclusion about what should be included and how the sites should be ranked.

Bessed editors are paid, either as employees or as freelancers. We feel this helps us maintain objectivity—no one is adding or not adding sites based on a personal interest in the search results.

On the plus side, Bessed offers: objective, human-powered search that encourages visitor participation but keeps spam out of results. Webmasters can get their sites listed free, and visitors can suggest additions, subtractions and modifications to the results, helping us improve the site continuously over time.

On the minus side, Bessed will have to deal with the issues of scalability. Simply put, a human-powered search site can not cover all the topics a robot-based search engine can, and it has the potential to be expensive to produce, especially in the ramping up phase. No one has been able to solve this challenge—Yahoo started with a Web directory and eventually gave it second-tier status while charging high inclusion fees. The Open Directory tried a volunteer-driven model, which has devolved to a state where no one can get a site listed and there are constant accusations of Dmoz editors holding topics hostage for their own personal gain.

For a startup like Bessed, the money/scalability issue is a huge challenge. Using paid editors versus volunteers is more expensive, even if it yields better results.

Now, on to Wikiasari.

Wikiasari will likely use a format in which visitors can manually make changes to search results, with the thought that this will help the cream rise to the top. This means that the site will rely on volunteers to create the vast majority of its service. As we have seen with Wikipedia, this can be done fairly well. And it completely solves the scalability issue, as you have thousands or even millions of people contributing to it. But can it be done as well with a search service as it has been done with an online encyclopedia?

Maybe, except for one thing that I believe is a huge factor. Wikiasari is a project of Jimmy Wales’ for-profit company Wikia. Wikipedia is non-profit. Are volunteers going to be interested in using their spare time to build a search engine that drives profits to Wikia, while they get nothing?

Jimmy Wales says that the recent cash infusion Wikia got from Amazon is not a factor here, but I have to wonder if Wikiasari is going to use some sort of mix of paid and unpaid editors to build the site out. After all, as a volunteer it’s a lot more interesting to help write an encyclopedia page about Lucille Ball (a la Wikipedia) than it is to make a list of Volvo dealerships in New Jersey (presumably a la Wikiasari). Trying to create a human-powered engine with unpaid volunteers who create and/or edit boring yet useful topics is going to be difficult, especially when it’s being done to build the revenue of a for-profit endeavor.

The hype this week has been about Wales building a competitor to Google. I don’t know if that is Wales’ goal or not, although he took some shots at Google in the original article discussing the launch of Wikiasari. At Bessed, our goal is not to compete with search engines but to complement them. We can’t do what a search engine does, but they can’t do what we’re doing, either. From where I’m sitting, Wales would be foolish to position a human-powered search service as competition to Google, but rather as a more intelligent yet less comprehensive alternative.

All in all, though, Wikiasari is a good thing from where I’m sitting because it gets more people talking about the possibilities of human-powered search, which gives me more opportunities to toot Bessed’s horn.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

SeenOn to Rain on Like.com’s Parade?

Like.com got a ton, just a ton, of attention last week when it debuted its new site that allows you to find products like those you may have seen in photos of celebrities or other people in magazines, news photos, etc. (See Like.com CEO Munjal Shah’s blog for a sample of the coverage the site got from blogging’s A-List.) It’s a cool idea—see something that a star is wearing and find items that match it it, such as shoes similar to those that you just saw Kate Moss wearing, etc.

To prove that good ideas seem to bubble up at the same time, I saw a Fast Company blog post about SeenOn, which doesn’t show you products that are “like” those you’ve seen on TV, in movies, etc., but instead you get the actual products you did see. It launched today.

From Fast Company:

Through partnerships with ABC Entertainment, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, CBS Paramount Television, E!, and Martha Stewart Omnimedia, SeenOn connects consumers with products seen on TV.

For example, if one evening you see one of the ladies from Wisteria Lane wearing something you admire you can read about it on the site. From the SeenON blog:

If you caught last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives then surely you didn’t miss Gabrielle in her undies. The revealing set was from the “Fifi” line of notoriously sexy lingerie house, Agent Provocateur.

Designers and stylists from programs such as “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Desperate Housewives” will provide SeenON with information about the wardrobes, housewares, and sets shown on their programs. Users can search for products by show, movie, actor, or product type. The site directs users to websites where they can purchase the products mentioned. In addition, the site will offer shop-able video content that the company is calling Shopisodes.

I have seen almost no coverage of SeenOn, probably because Like.com has more of the “Web 2.0″ cachet and also because its founder has plenty of contacts in the blogosphere. In this case, it’s the outsider offering “like” products that gets the attention, while the insiders that can offer the real thing are largely ignored.

Is SeenOn a good or bad thing for Like.com? It’s hard to say. On the surface, SeenOn seems to have the advantage. It’s backed by the heavy hitters that actually make the shows that people want to buy the goods from. And it’s the real thing, not an approximation of what the actors are wearing on a TV episode or in a movie. If you are a viewer that just luuuuvs what you saw Eva Longoria wearing on Desperate Housewives, you are likely to go to this site and buy it up.

So, does this cook Like.com’s goose?

No, but it does make their job a bit harder.

I should start by saying that Like.com is offering something more sophisticated than SeenOn, even though it’s not guaranteeing that it can show you the exact product you might see Paris Hilton wearing. Because Like.com gives you the option to see similar products and then do some tweaking to find something that fits your needs a little better. So, if you dig a certain style of shoes you saw Halle Berry wearing but you know you’d never wear a heel that high, you can do a little adjusting on Like.com’s sliding scale and get shoes that keep the style but get rid of the things you don’t quite like, or maybe add something you do like. This is the promise at least; whether Like can deliver on this is in question.

If I understand correctly, Like.com is also planning to eventually let you give it a picture and it will use some kind of smart technology to figure out what products are similar to what’s in the picture. In that case, you could take some paparazzi shot of Jennifer Aniston and find some handbags close to that which she used to beat the photographer over the head with. (Right now Like is only offering its own pictures and letting you home in on the products it has pre-selected.) This will be very cool, provided again that Like.com can deliver on its promise.

The other part of the equation is whether having SeenOn on the scene will actually call more attention to Like.com. It’s often said that competition can actually raise the profile of all the competitors instead of hurting any of them. For example, in the future, journalists could easily write things like “with the proliferation of dress-like-the-stars sites like Seen On and Like.com, it’s becoming harder and harder for divas to stand out from the crowd.” See what’s going on there? It’s as if the competition created a trend, where if there’s only a single player it’s harder to say whether it really signifies anything and whether it’s worth writing about. So, from this perspective, Like.com could benefit from being lumped in with a site that has the backing of major entertainment heavyweights.

Or not. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world. 

Bessed, One Month In

With one month under our belts since our launch, it’s time to assess where the Bessed site on the Web currently stands.

For the month of October, Bessed had 7,512 page views, or about 242 page views per day. Peanuts, but actually fairly encouraging. We launched with no name recognition, no venture capital to boast of, no TechCrunch profile.

We expanded the site to over 225 topic pages. Our goal is to have at 200 new pages created each month here in the earlygoing, and ramp that up in a few more months to really reach some critical mass. We are still at a place where 90% of the searches are simply coming up empty. While I don’t like that and want to see a better hit rate, we’re encouraged that Webmasters are using the site comments to request new categories and to have their sites listed, so many of them seem to get it.

A mention in Erick Schonfeld’s Business 2.0 blog (“The Search for the Next Big Leap in Search“) and a kind word from Adam Audette in his LED-Digest brought Bessed some attention, but otherwise I can’t say the paparazzi were camped out in front of my house or anything.

All in all, not a bad first month.

Reporting the News in a New Way

My biggest concern in creating Bessed (other than money, time and resources) has been to differentiate it from what other search services offer.

We can not compete with the major search engines on their turf. We’ll never be able to supply the phone number of your local pizza place in every city of the United States. There is an inherent limitation to using human editors.

We can easily become the best Web directory, but that’s a short hurdle. It will take time, but I have no doubt Bessed will outshine the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory over the long haul.

But that’s not enough. To be more than a small, marginally profitable entity, we have to offer something no one else is offering. To do so, I’ve looked at Wikipedia for inspiration. Bessed is very different from Wikipedia, but we can learn from it in building our site.

People love Wikipedia because it’s one of the few places online you can go to get a complete overview on a topic. Want to know about the magician David Copperfield? (Just pulling a name out of the air here, couldn’t say where it came from.) Wikipedia will tell you where David Copperfield was born, his life history and a few other interesting tidbits. Sure, the nature of Wikipedia means that someone could come in and write that Copperfield sleeps with 75 snakes each night, but in general you’re going to get pretty accurate information from the site. And no one other site is as thorough on so many topics.

What does Bessed do to similarly differentiate itself? We first must understand that to be a different kind of search service it won’t be enough to just offer a bunch of links. Instead, we have to paint a picture on each search results page. Someone should be able to come in and within the first dozen links have a great overview of a topic. Then, if they want to delve further, they can use the links further down the page. In the end, they should feel like they got everything they needed in the shortest amount of time possible.

No search engine or directory does an adequate job of this. Search engines use an algorithm that often gives you the almost identical content from 10 different competing sites, forcing you to keep looking and looking to get a clear picture of a topic you’re researching. Web directories give you a bunch of static links listed alphabetically and tell you to do with them what you will. Search engines aren’t ideal, directories aren’t even close.

Bessed has the opportunity to paint that picture. As an example, see our World Series 2006 results. We start with the official site of the World Series from Major Leage Baseball, but then the links are sort of a backward-looking view at the Series as it progresses. Right now that means that you’re getting Game 2 highlight links, including multiple links from news organizations and blogs about the controversy over whether Detroit Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers was using an illegal substance to get a leg up on the Cardinals. Further down are select links on Game 1, further down from there are links to articles that previewed the Series. Interspersed among those links are links to commentary on the Series overall. By the time the Series is over, a visitor will be able to come in and quickly find just about everything he or she would want to know about this World Series, from the big picture to the game-by-game highlights to the opinions of both journalists and fans who followed the event.

We’re not creating content, but by artfully putting the story together through the use of timely, relevant links, it becomes a comprehensive look at the many aspects of this World Series.

Our goal is to do this as much as possible, to become the go-to site for anyone who wants a well-crafted overview of an event, person, subject, etc. Some topics will lend themselves to this better than others. The World Series has more depth than the subject of air compressors, unless you’re really, really into air compressors.

If we can become the go-to site for the best links on topics people are looking to really dive into, we will also get the less deep searches as well, and that’s what will ultimately drive our success.

I mentioned to someone not long ago that what Bessed is doing is what a smart newspaper would do. A smart newspaper would continue to report stories, but backfill those stories with links to other newspapers, blogs, sites of interest that provide an overview of the subject being reported on—each story offers the reader a chance to get the big picture. No one does this because they don’t want to give up the eyeballs. (To be fair, some newspapers have begun to include blog links alongside stories, but it’s an automated, hit-or-miss affair.)

We’re certainly not going into the newspaper business, but we’re going to fill that gap where search, news, blogging and wikis intersect—or where they would intersect if anyone was willing to put the work in to make it happen.

Is Google Custom Search a Revolution or Just Keeping Up with the Yahoos?

As part of its Google Co-op offering, Google is now offering you the ability to “roll your own” search engine. Basically this means you can create a custom search engine for your site that can limit the search to certain URLs, or give certain URLs priority in the results. This can be used simply as a site search to allow people to search your site, or you can include many multiple sites in your engine that are authority sites for whatever niche you might be interested in. For example, you could create your own Beatles search engine and give priority to sites you know do a good job of focusing on Beatles content. And, Google’s offering will add Adsense ads to the search engine, giving Webmasters a share of revenue if site visitors click on the ads.

It’s a nice offering, but I imagine it will have limited adoption. Why? Because it takes work to create a custom search engine in terms of deciding which URLs are more important than others, and unless you really see this search engine as providing a service to your visitors, you probably won’t bother. Yes, there is the revenue share aspect that will drive some people to it, but God knows Google ads are already everywhere. Webmasters don’t really need a new custom search engine as a way to increase their Adsense income–the result is more likely to be a shift in terms of where the revenue comes from than an increase in revenue overall.

The most obvious application is for Webmasters to use Google’s search interface to offer visitors the opportunity to search their own sites, something Google’s already been offering for a long time.

I don’t know if this is really seen as a big idea inside Google or simply a way to keep up with Yahoo’s Search Builder and similar offerings from companies such as Rollyo.

The fact is that in most cases when you do a search, you don’t want it limited to just a few sites. Although it may be true that you’d like to see sites come out on top that you consider most trustworthy, you don’t want to shun sites that are little-known but happen to cover small niches really well. And it’s not always readily apparent where a good search result is going to come from. A site that spends a lot of time talking about hockey might suddenly write a very informative page or blog post on the best places to visit in Toronto. If your personal search engine excludes certain sites or always makes others more important, you might miss out on the good stuff from unlikely sources. Some will be willing to pay that price, but most will just continue to let the search engines sort it out, even if at times the results they get are frustrating.

TechCrunch and GigaOM both covered this, and neither seemed to think it was overly earth-shaking.

Via Brewed Fresh Daily, here’s a Google Custom Search just created for Cleveland, Ohio information.