Monday, February 20, 2006
RED HERRING | PreFound Humanizes Search:
"A new search startup looks to profit by getting searchers to shape search results.
February 18, 2006
With Google handling an increasing number of the world’s Internet searches, it’s getting tougher for rivals and startups to get respect. MSN is resorting to giveaways like digital cameras when users of its search engine enter the lucky keywords (see MSN Lures Searchers with Gifts). Meanwhile, Amazon rewards users of its A9 search engine with a discount on purchases.
Then there’s PreFound. The Lexington, Kentucky-based firm is looking to get the public’s attention by coming up with a new way to search. The company’s product is somewhat akin to search’s answer to Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. When someone types in a search term, the results pulled up by PreFound’s engine include materials found on the web and posted by previous users.
A user searching for “sugar” on the PreFound site would pull up groups of links on the topic collected by people who had searched for the same term on the web as opposed to links simply generated through an algorithm.
PreFound appears to be an addition to the rapidly growing list of social web and search sites, which encourage users to rank and rate content based on relevance. The idea is rooted in the concept of a more democratic web that is shaped by the people that use it.
Like Wink, PreFound is also a social search engine but it is more dependent on “human indexing.”
The site, which is barely a month old, has 1.2 million links, most of which have been preloaded from the Open Directory Project, the foundation for many search engines. But in an attempt to expand its user base, it’s offering to share ad revenue with its users.
Featured Finders
In an interview last week, PreFound’s CEO Steve Mansfield said the site was looking for experts to become featured finders on the site. To do this, these experts must upload groups of links on a topic that they’ve tagged and organized on the web.
In return, PreFound will give them the revenue their pages have generated through AdSense, Google’s program that pays publishers to run ads from its network.
Providing incentives for people to contribute to PreFound is paying off. It has already bumped up traffic 300 percent, said Mr. Mansfield. But he added that such a program had to be treated carefully so that it would work as more than just a marketing gimmick.
“The problem really with for-pay social [adding] is getting good quality,” said Mr. Mansfield. “That’s why people have to apply to be a featured finder. There’s no point paying for a page no one’s going to go to.”
The concept of a social web picked up steam last year when Yahoo launched MyWeb 2.0, a product through which people can bookmark and share pages with their online communities. Yahoo showed it was serious about the space when it proceeded to buy social bookmarking site del.icio.us in December to enhance what it already had (see Yahoo Buys del.icio.us).
The problem, however, is that many of these sites are loved and used primarily by geeks and not the mainstream Internet user. And PreFound, rolled out by iLor, a research and development tank, might not be an exception.
“I think it’s a niche product,” said Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar. “For those of us who are geeks and understand the power of the social network, it makes sense. But will [non-geeky] people behave this way? It’s a question.”
Regular People
And to be sure, it’s primarily researchers and professors who have taken to PreFound in its early phase. But Mr. Mansfield points out that his site doesn’t require users to contribute to the site—unless they want to. While geeks can come to his site and tag and upload all they want, regular people without any interest in technology can also come by and just search.
“We want to connect the Web 2.0 community—savvy individuals who would use del.icio.us—we’re trying to connect them to the traditional world, to people who can barely use Google,” said Mr. Mansfield.
And that he could be competing with a company like Yahoo, which has millions more monthly users, doesn’t seem to faze him.
“Look at the success of MySpace,” says Mr. Mansfield. “It shows people do want to be part of a community, with little motivation other than being part of the community.”"
"A new search startup looks to profit by getting searchers to shape search results.
February 18, 2006
With Google handling an increasing number of the world’s Internet searches, it’s getting tougher for rivals and startups to get respect. MSN is resorting to giveaways like digital cameras when users of its search engine enter the lucky keywords (see MSN Lures Searchers with Gifts). Meanwhile, Amazon rewards users of its A9 search engine with a discount on purchases.
Then there’s PreFound. The Lexington, Kentucky-based firm is looking to get the public’s attention by coming up with a new way to search. The company’s product is somewhat akin to search’s answer to Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. When someone types in a search term, the results pulled up by PreFound’s engine include materials found on the web and posted by previous users.
A user searching for “sugar” on the PreFound site would pull up groups of links on the topic collected by people who had searched for the same term on the web as opposed to links simply generated through an algorithm.
PreFound appears to be an addition to the rapidly growing list of social web and search sites, which encourage users to rank and rate content based on relevance. The idea is rooted in the concept of a more democratic web that is shaped by the people that use it.
Like Wink, PreFound is also a social search engine but it is more dependent on “human indexing.”
The site, which is barely a month old, has 1.2 million links, most of which have been preloaded from the Open Directory Project, the foundation for many search engines. But in an attempt to expand its user base, it’s offering to share ad revenue with its users.
Featured Finders
In an interview last week, PreFound’s CEO Steve Mansfield said the site was looking for experts to become featured finders on the site. To do this, these experts must upload groups of links on a topic that they’ve tagged and organized on the web.
In return, PreFound will give them the revenue their pages have generated through AdSense, Google’s program that pays publishers to run ads from its network.
Providing incentives for people to contribute to PreFound is paying off. It has already bumped up traffic 300 percent, said Mr. Mansfield. But he added that such a program had to be treated carefully so that it would work as more than just a marketing gimmick.
“The problem really with for-pay social [adding] is getting good quality,” said Mr. Mansfield. “That’s why people have to apply to be a featured finder. There’s no point paying for a page no one’s going to go to.”
The concept of a social web picked up steam last year when Yahoo launched MyWeb 2.0, a product through which people can bookmark and share pages with their online communities. Yahoo showed it was serious about the space when it proceeded to buy social bookmarking site del.icio.us in December to enhance what it already had (see Yahoo Buys del.icio.us).
The problem, however, is that many of these sites are loved and used primarily by geeks and not the mainstream Internet user. And PreFound, rolled out by iLor, a research and development tank, might not be an exception.
“I think it’s a niche product,” said Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar. “For those of us who are geeks and understand the power of the social network, it makes sense. But will [non-geeky] people behave this way? It’s a question.”
Regular People
And to be sure, it’s primarily researchers and professors who have taken to PreFound in its early phase. But Mr. Mansfield points out that his site doesn’t require users to contribute to the site—unless they want to. While geeks can come to his site and tag and upload all they want, regular people without any interest in technology can also come by and just search.
“We want to connect the Web 2.0 community—savvy individuals who would use del.icio.us—we’re trying to connect them to the traditional world, to people who can barely use Google,” said Mr. Mansfield.
And that he could be competing with a company like Yahoo, which has millions more monthly users, doesn’t seem to faze him.
“Look at the success of MySpace,” says Mr. Mansfield. “It shows people do want to be part of a community, with little motivation other than being part of the community.”"
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