Michael , first thanks for the post. Just a couple of things I wanted to clarify was that we made a conscious decision not to use tagging but do use keyword analysis as you mentioned because we believe tagging dilutes relevancy. Case and point I tag a site as “Super Bowl” but it is a porn site.
We accomplish a unique approach to relevancy without using metadata through our patent-pending PersonalRank techology that enables a user to search the web based upon how far content is away from them. Our goal is to empower the user through a “one-click” process without the cognitive burden of tagging and self description. You either jook or share content with friends or other jooksters and at the same time filter the web and identify what is relevant to you. Our ranking is based upon the proximity of the content to the user and by this the user can imply how much trust they can put in the information. As you mentioned “jooked by my network” which identifies to the user that the proximity of the content to the user is 1 degrees away, tells the user the level of trust they can put in the site without using metadata to say “Hey I like this site!”. Just some thoughts …Cheers, and thanks again.

Kapenda,

Thanks for the comment. One question - since you have a feature which allows me to limit the scope of user bookmarks to just friends and freinds of friends, etc., doesn’t this mitigate the spam problem? It seems to me that user tagging is a great way to get quality data - Del.icio.us in some ways has the best search engine on the web.

Also, are you planning on allowing a user to interact with bookmarked pages? In other words, will I be able to see a list of all pages that I’ve bookmarked?

Can someone please describe for me how all these niche-search engines plan to turn a buck? Is everyone chasing the same ad revenue train? Or is a Google acquisition everybody’s exit strategy?? Where’s the critical mass of users going to come from? And what about the true innovation? The amount of incremental improvement going on is lamentable.

I’ve looked at pretty much all of these so-called 2.0 specialty engines you’ve featured on this blog, tried them out briefly and on average my response has been: “mleh, big deal - i’m not going to use this”. Nor will my sister, or my mom, ever. Nor most of my tech-savvy friends who just can’t be bothered to be part of another “online community”. I believe Time/Energy/Attention Dilution is going to start setting in, meaning the grow curve for the “social media” that is getting so much attention (on this, and other blogs) is very soon going to slam up against the flat part of the “S” curve. I’m afraid Web 2.0 is going to turn into something a disappointment for all of us, who can’t help getting caught in yet another technological orgy of self-congratulation (yes, I’m including myself in that group).

And if I come across another new web technology that adopts a cutesy name with “oo” in it, I think I’m going to have to throw something very heavy at something very fragile.

That is the goal with the “degree of separation search feature”. Friends and Friends of Friends, will contribute more relevant sites. Because information is contributed based upon the proximity of you to the user, the content will be more relevant to you but also each user will have their own personalized view of the web based upon the community in which they belong. Simply, my jooked sites for a specific keyword may be different than yours because of my network. This also negates the need to tag. However, the further the content is away from you the less likely it may or may not be relevant to you. We leverage the knowledge of the communities to determine what content is most relevant to all with the goal of reducing the relevancy of spam sites and reducing their ranking within Jookster. So the closer the information the less likely spam will exist.
In regards to viewing the sites you have bookmarked or jooked we are planning on providing a feature in the near term , coming soon, that will enable you as a user to not only managed your Jook History but also manage your network.

Off Topic.

Was at a developer event last night and Robert Scoble mentioned that Tech Crunch was his favourite blog. http://pmwjournal.blogspot.com.....ublin.html

Off Topic.

Quintura (www.quintura.com) is going to operate in line with Quintura. But beside community search it already offers map search for free download.

Sharing makes a lot of magic in web 2.0 where u can share your things of interest with you
r user community Jookster is one of such services where search result is shared and the
key word analysis is used for finding extent of relevance. May be a this calculations can
be based on the biased weightage to both meta tags and keyword analysis.

#3. Mat

I cannot speak for other web 2.0 search engines but I do have a plan to turn a buck and what I’m doing is a very real search operation with true innovation and a real business model behind it.

You make a valid point in that these new search engines and web 2.0 companies will not hit critical mass based on gee-whiz stuff and fluff reviews by bloggers and mainstream media tech writers.

But like any business, it take time to develop and proliferate. It will also take building partnerships, acquiring ’smart’ capitalization,learning from mistakes dealing with regulations, attracting skilled talent and giving the customer what they want and willing to pay for. I’m feeling many people (like you) see web 2.0 companies as something that can be developed quickly and should be profitable & popular in 90 days or it’s a failure. That’s being a little unrealistic.

In the 90s, I looked at Google and said ‘whatever’ when AltaVista,Lycos,HotBot,InfoSeek and Excite pretty much gave me what I wanted in search. The same can happen in a few years which is why we can’t dismiss these new search 2.0 firms and think Google will rule. Actually, I say ‘whatever’ at Google today because I know there are better ways to find information online quickly.

AOL was a ‘Google’ in the 90s and look where they are at today. That is what motivate me to work on my endeavor.

You are more than welcome to dialog with me on this matter. I’m reachable through my site.

Kapenda,

The argument against tagging because it will encourage spam is not a strong argument from my experience. I know another site that “watch” search engines use the same argument against tagging and their argument is weak also.

The argument of tagging can create spam is weak for several reason. The first reason is that the database is owned by an entity and can be filtered more efficiently than e-mail/messaging systems. I can use business intelligence and semantics against my database to determine that a site that use the word ‘SuperBowl’ is not related to the other sites using the same term and purge that site. The second reason is that from my experience, the majority of Internet users are trustworthy contributors. The value of 1 trustworthy user providing a tag of value outweighs 1000 spam tags since I have the technology and capability to wipe out those 1000 spam tags from my database on a regular basis.

Ed, point taken. Never would I be arrogant enough to say that there are no applications for tagging. That point has been proven. However, my comment to Michael was to clarify that Jookster is NOT yet another tagging company or social bookmarking site for that matter. Jookster is taking a different approach to the problem that plagues us all, that of information overload. We view ourselves more as a web 2.0 search engine.

I guess I’m a bit cynical, but how is this user-driven search a step forward? The web is an amorphous being - so how static user-generated metadata an ideal description of it?

Jookster doesn’t rely on this metadata, which is nice, but why is this bookmarking search a signifigant advancement? The friends things is interesting, I guess I don’t see it being more relevant or having a better scope than a standard search engine. IF you had trained users tagging sites, that might work, but then wer’e back to a good old directory structure (basically), which we had many years ago.