Dear Jason Calacanis,

I was visiting your blog today, and I noticed that Advertising Age today and noticed Mark Simon criticized Mahalo. Evidently, he’s can’t believe that human powered search can work. He specifically says:

6. “HUMAN-POWERED” SEARCH ENGINES.
The reason search engines are much better places to find information than directories is because they leverage automation to do the grunt work that human editors used to do.

Well, Jason, I can’t help but agree. As I’ve pointed out, the guides you have working on Mahalo are having some difficulty applying the style guide, catching dead links, and catching sneaky redirects that appear after the page is published. Still, I know you plan to persist in the insane endeavor you call “Mahalo”.

As long as you are, I’d like to make a few suggestions. I think you will recognize the underlying goal of each: Let computers and ‘bot do what they do well, let humans do what they do well!

So, here goes: (more…)

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 5 comments

Dear Jason Calacanis,

I was thrilled to see referrers from Google Mail’s Mahalo email area indicating that people were visiting my post “Dear Jason, You Have a Problem with Link Rot NOW.” I was even more thrilled to check the revision history for climate change and discove, soon after those hits to my article, Sara removed the link rot that Lon missed during his early morning revisions!

Responsiveness does encourage feedback.

You predicted, the ability of total outsiders to comment on the pesky little problems at Mahalo would encourage us to give you more feedback. So it has!

So about news scarper sites. . .

I will tell you that this morning, I was saddened to see that Mahalo Press Coverage for August 22, 2007 currently includes a link to what appears to be a scraper blog. You know, the sort of blog that just copies the contents of other blog posts?

If you visit Technology News Blog: Jason Calacanis: Fast Company profile raises more questions than it asks, you will find that “news” story seems to simply regurgitate ValleyWags August 21, 2007 story with the somewhat similar title “Technology News Blog: Jason Calacanis: Fast Company profile raises more questions than it asks”.

Might I suggest the duplicate story be removed? Might I also suggest you train the Mahalo guides to compare the titles and content of “new” stories to already posted stories. That habit would help them avoid this sort of embarrassing duplication of content in the results of your human powered - reviewed - massaged or whatever search engine.

Why not replace that slot with Jason Calacanis - Mahalo?

I know deleting the link to that duplicate content article might make it seem the blog-o-sphere is not simply abuzz about Mahalo. So, might I suggest you replace the link to that scraper site with Jason Calacanis - Mahalo?

CyberCelt included a screen shot that shows the absolutely splendid results returned for “advertising”.

Now, I know that because Mahalo is only in beta alpha, the sort of results Cyber Celt shows might not be considered news. But don’t you think the VC’s might want to gauge public reaction to what you’ve released for public perusal? Especially by people outside the Techcrunch 50,000? Even if they just don’t seem to “get it” about Mahalo?

Or maybe the VC’s should be shielded from that story?

Of course, this is just unsolicited advice from a knitter. I’m sure you’ll use your judgment on including these links to these sorts of negative reactions. After all, maybe the Venture Capitalists aren’t sophisticated enough to understand Cyber Celt’s complex story told using screen shots of the results pages.

Alas, my news article is missing too.

Naturally, I would never question why Dear Jason, You Have a Problem with Link Rot NOW was not included in the August 22 news stories. I’m sure the guides got busy responding to emails and making all the changes I suggested, and just forgot to add the story.

Wishing you well!

As always, I admire your gumption in trying to make this thing work. Dealing with enthusiastic underpaid guides and the flurry of volunteers in the Greenhouse must be a bit like herding cats. Still, I’m sure that by 2040, you will manage to put Google out of business.

I hope my feedback helps!

Sincerely, Lucia

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 3 comments

Dear Jason Calacanis,
I read your response to Skrentablog’s criticism that Mahalo will have problems with link rot.¹ The fact is you have a problem with link rot right now on at least one page updated by your team today.

Dead Links / Stale Links on Climate_Change

Let’s look at the links on your search results for “Climate Change” which was edited on August 22 — in other words today.

Because my husband had to take “polar bear defense” training before setting off on an arctic research expedition, I clicked on “‘Don’t discuss polar bears’: memo to scientists” found on Mahalo’s climate change links page.

Clicking lead me to this now dead article.¹

Nestled among banner ads and Google Ads, we find the content. It says “We’re sorry… this story is not currently available”.

By the way, I held up writing this post. That link was already dead a week ago.

How many stale links appear on the very day Mahalo search results are “updated”

I’m not going to click to check every link; that’s what Mahalo’s team should be doing. But anyone who enjoys reading news and issue oriented blog quickly learns which news sites habitually publish stories under temporary links.²

I know your team will find it helpful to learn your freshly reviewed page contains at least four additional dead links. These include:

1. The Latimes editorial: “Climate deal talks gain global support” (Published August 3.)
2. Another Yahoo news article: “Blair Using Last Bush Visit to Urge Action on Climate”.
3. Reuters news article: “Singer Sheryl Crow starts global warming tour”.

More dead links than Google.

Google results are sometimes mediocre too, but they are rarely dead. The ‘bot catches the little “We’re sorry… this story is not currently available” messages and gets the articles off their index rather quickly.

Many, including Allen Stern and Peter D at V7N have warned you that Mahalo needs to think ahead on this link rot issue. On your podcast Graywolf warned you that lack of scalability ensured linkrot in Mahalo’s fu ture.

But honestly, the Mahalo link rot is not only your future: Mahalo link rot is now.

Here’s a suggestion from someone who is not a member of the TechCrunch 50,000: Either ask your team to actually look at each web page, or develop an algorithm that recognizes that a page is now dead. Then check your links.

Because those outside the Techcrunch 50,000 prefer search engines that return live links.

Mis-categorized & Missing Important Links.

There are other problems with the page. There is at least one mis-categorized link under “blogs and forums”. (That is, they are miscategorized if one believes all links under “blogs and forums” should point to a blog or forum rather than a Joomla Newsportal.)

Also, I have reason to believe the most relevant, authoritative and, well “best” links are missing. After all, “Real Climate” does not appear on the list of blogs; it should. There is undeniable: “Real Climate” ranks #1 for “climate change” at Technorati, #2 in the Google search for “Climate Change Blog”. With contributors who publish regularly in referred journals on Climate Change, and hundreds of comments per blog post, Real Climate, is arguably the most influential climate change blog in the US.

Are other important links missing? Frankly I don’t know. I strongly suspect they are.

Now Jason, bless your heart. I know you’re trying. I know Mahalo, while released and constantly extolled by you at your blog, is only in Beta. That said, it would be one thing if the humans missing the most important links in a subject was a one time thing.

It’s not a one time thing. As you recall, I criticized your links page for Crochet because it lacks the most authoritative link.

I speculated this happened because the list of links for “crochet” was compiled by people who do not crochet.

I will now be so bold as to repeat advise I have given before: assign the compilation of links to people who are familiar with the subject at hand.

As always Jason, I wish you luck with your endeavor.

Cheers,
Lucia

5. If we have a staff of 100 at Mahalo and those folk update 15 pages a day (i.e. 30 minutes per page) we can do 1,500 updates a day or update the entire 25,000 page index in ~20 days/one month. If we had the public (i.e. Greenhouse help) with the 1,000 folks in the Greenhouse we could update everything in 10-15 days. So, we can handle updating 25,000. 600,000 pages? No…. that would be a problem.

2. For what it’s worth, I probably found all or most the dead links. I clicked all except the ones I was almost certain would remain live (e.g. government agencies, blogs and such.) Certain big daily news services habitually run articles under temporary links and later run the article under a permanent links. Careful bloggers learn how to find the permalink. I found the March 8 article and currently live link by entering the title of the article into Reuters search box; the article is here.

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 2 comments

Dear Jason,
Following your recommendation, I installed “Mahalo Follow”. I’m happy to report that I haven’t had so much fun since I played my first video game. Congratulations on discovering Mahalo’s true calling: entertainment!

When I first read that one of the Mahalo Follow’s features was its ability to detect relevant links to a web site viewed in the browser, I thought, “What fun!” So, I eagerly dashed to your blog to give Mahalo Follow’s “concurrent search” a test. (I saw that this morning you were requesting your readers Stumble something or other. Brilliant post, btw.)

Of course, Mahalo Follow was everything I expected. It figured out the the content on your today’s blog entries are is somehow associated with “Pink”, “Peaches”, “Scott Storch” and “Christina Aguilara”. Amazing!

I understand Danny Sullivan had the gall to criticize Mahalo Follow for “funky” results. Evidently, he thinks Mahalo is flawed because it returns results like “Elton John” when you search “Simpsons movie”.

You, Jason patiently explained that the keyword correlation is poor because Mahalo itself contains so few search results. That’s telling Danny!

Clearly, when a web page (like yours) contain words that have been included in Mahalo search, the results are great!

After all, the terrific results like one I just showed were based on keywords contained both in your blog post and Mahalo search, including: “mahalo, comments, email, covers, silicon, reporter, alley, berry, ombudsman, follow, pink, ping, any, feedback, dmozodp, editors, weekend, los, off, love”.

But does Mahalo do as well if we visit other people’s pages?

I was so inspired by the first result, I thought I’d check out articles listed in Mahalo press coverage . (BTW. I like the dolphins on that browser extension. I bet you picked dolphins because their silly tricks are so entertaining, right? )

I always enjoy Mashable, so I clicked the link to their review of your nifty dolphin encrusted plugin extension. I must say, their title, Mahalo Follow Offers Poor Comparative Search Tools, is rather harsh. The comments in that article were even harsher.

Imagine, someone named “Marc” said, “…but the execution is worthlessly uninspired and no more usable than a generic phpLinkDirectory site.”

So unjustified! How can something as entertaining as Mahalo be called unusable?

Who could fail to delight in the discovery that Mashable’s discussion of your nifty new video-game like browser extension matches your splendid article, “How to Book a Cheap Flight”?

Wow!

(That splendid match is based on these key terms: “about mahalo, search, follow, results, post, poor, offers, new, comparative, tools, trackbacks, related, entries, well, better, sites, next, feature, comment, browser.” )

So, congratulations Jason. Surfing the web is more enjoyable than ever now that I can view Mahalo search results in the sidebar. I’m predict great success now that you have decided to focus on what Mahalo does best: info-tainment!

Sincerely,
Lucia
P.S. I also enjoyed the sidebar results when I visited Wikipedia’s page on Genesis. I was nearly overcome when I saw that Bartleby’s entry for the bible matches “Spiderman” and “Spider-man Films”, and Google’s search on “double crochet” matches “Indian National Cricket Team”.

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 10 comments

Yesterday, Allan Stern posted Jason Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo, and Melinda part time guide at Mahalo, posted to defend Mahalo’s search results.

In the course of the conversation, Melinda, who does not like Kielbasa, described the process of creating the search results for the Kielbasa search results page. She said:

I put my best finger forward and created what I think is a page that were one to search for Kielbasa they would find the needed information without having to look through hundreds of results as I did. I ran into numerous pages of supposed Kielbasa recipes only to be linked to pages full of advertisements.

(Emphasis added.)

Mind you, I’m not sure I, or anyone, knows what the “needed information” is when one searches for “kielbasa”. That said, Mahalo’s top seven results are shown to the right. Most contain ads; I’ve circled the ones I consider riddled with ads.

Still, if Melinda is correct, we will find “the needed information” on these pages that percolated up as she sorted through hundreds of results available on Google. Presumably, we will find also find fewer ads and/or better information than on results returned by Google.

Comparison shows just as many (if not more) ads on Mahalo search results as on Google search results.

(more…)

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | One comment

Dear Jason Calacanis ,
I read Allen Stern’s criticism of Mahalo, your new “search engine” that is going to put Google out of business. Evidently, he thinks the fact Mahalo couldn’t catch the news that Skype went down yesterday is a flaw.

Evidently, you, Jason, think Skype isn’t big news.

Bless your heart, Jason, but Skype is big news. Or at least, it was big news to the many who searched for information yesterday. They couldn’t find that information about the outage on Mahalo.

Luckily, they could find the news they sought on Google and Technorati.

Finding the information you want: that’s what people use search engines for. If Mahalo doesn’t find them, Mahalo is irrelevant.

Lucia
P.S. I’m glad to see you thought to add the Skype stub after Allen out Mahalo’s lapse.

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 2 comments

Dear Jason,
Today, I told Mom all about Mahalo. I also told her that Jim and I are going to be in a tango competition in late August. She asked, “What are you going to wear?” I said, “Dunno….” She gave me that look, you know that look.

So “we” decided to search for costumes and searched for “Tango”:

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | One comment

Did you see Jason Calacanis’s self promotional post about his search engine, Mahalo? If you did, you might not realize his Mahalo is a piece of shhh. . a side-splittingly funny search engine!

Don’t believe me? Here are the results returned for “knitting twice into same stitch”:

Words fail me! That’s a lie: Like Mimi in “La Boheme”, words never fail me. (more…)

© Lucia for Big Bucks Blogger, 2007. | Visit Post | 8 comments