Mahalo.com – An About.com/Wikipedia Hybrid

Mahalo Logo
Former Weblogs Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis unveiled Mahalo.com, previously referred by Jason as Project X, at the D Conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal today. Mahalo dubs itself as “the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible.”

My immediate reaction of the new site was “isn’t this a lot like Wikipedia or Yahoo from 1996?” But after taking it in for a couple of minutes I realized Mahalo isn’t trying to out-do Google but rather climb to the top of selected search terms. Mahalo wants to be a one stop site for very specific, though popular, search terms making it a valuable resource to link to or cite throughout the web. While most people may not be swayed to jump straight to Mahalo for their questions, they will learn to trust the source when it appears near the top of their search result.

Mahalo Screenshot

ChaCha.com, another human powered search engine, hasn’t gotten much traction even though it has been at the search game since late 2006. I imagine Mahalo will have a tough time finding it’s niche since against the likes of Wikipedia. Unlike the open-system of Wikipedia that anyone can contribute to, Mahalo is a controlled by a select few and the general public can merely suggest links to be included in the topic pages.

I imagine Mr. Calacanis has something else up his sleeve and, to be fair, Mahalo is in Alpha (whatever that means). Hopefully this By Humans For Humans approach will prod the other search engines in to improving their offerings but, in the long run, Mahalo will only rise to the like of About.com.

PROS
-Human moderated so there will be no Spam.
-Quality links and information organized in one place.
-Focused results for very specific topics.

CONS
-Not an open system like Wikipedia
-Small selection of search terms compared to the rest of the Internet.
-Human powered = Labor intensive.

Conclusion: Google and Wikipedia work for me until Mahalo offers something more compelling.

11 Responses to “ Mahalo.com – An About.com/Wikipedia Hybrid ”

  1. Sounds exactly like Bessed.

  2. Seems like a waste of money…

  3. If Mahalo rises to the level of About.com that won’t be such a bad thing. About has been sustainable since 1997 and is now a part of the New York Times company. 10 years in this business is a HUGE achievement… I only hope Mahalo is around for that long.

  4. I’m really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it is rare to see a great blog like this one these days.

  5. A few things i have continually told individuals is that when evaluating a
    good internet electronics retail outlet, there are a
    few elements that you have to factor in. First and foremost, you should make sure to
    discover a reputable and in addition, reliable retail
    store that has received great testimonials and classification from other shoppers and business
    world experts. This will make sure that you are getting through with a well-known store
    providing you with good services and help to their patrons.
    Thanks for sharing your notions on this web
    site.

  6. I visited various web sites except the audio feature for audio
    songs present at this website is really excellent.

  7. Heya i am for the first time here. I found this board
    and I find It truly useful & it helped me out a lot.

    I hope to give something back and aid others like you aided me.

  8. Heya!
    It appears as though we both have a passion for the same thing.
    Your blog and mine are very similar. Have you ever thought about writing a guest post for a similar website?

    It will unquestionably help gain exposure to your website (my website receives a lot of targeted traffic).
    If you might be interested, email me. Thanks

  9. Hi there i am kavin, its my first time to commenting anywhere, when
    i read this post i thought i could also make comment due to
    this brilliant article.

  10. I’ve been browsing online more than 3 hours today, but I by no means discovered any attention-grabbing article like yours. It’s pretty value sufficient for me.
    Personally, if all web owners and bloggers made just right content as you did,
    the net will likely be a lot more useful than ever before.

  11. Fantastic post however I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this topic?
    I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Appreciate it!

Leave a Comment of Your Own