Comments on: Sphere Nails Long Term Deal With About.com http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/ Startup and Technology News Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:17:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: About Sphere, what am I missing? « SEND IT!!! http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-368964 About Sphere, what am I missing? « SEND IT!!! Fri, 10 Nov 2006 23:46:47 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-368964 [...] Recently, I had the opportunity to install the “Sphere It!” button on my browser under the presumption that Sphere’s algorithms would unearth related content better than anything else I had used before. This is a promise that keeps coming up, from search engines offering relatedness or selling their intuitive sense of what people are looking for, through their years of research and the intelligence and experience of their founders. Well, I’m sorry to say, this one falls by the way side like all of the others, though their marketing has served them well given the types of deals they’ve been doing as of late (ie. Time.com, About.com, Marketwatch, etc.) [...] [...] Recently, I had the opportunity to install the “Sphere It!” button on my browser under the presumption that Sphere’s algorithms would unearth related content better than anything else I had used before. This is a promise that keeps coming up, from search engines offering relatedness or selling their intuitive sense of what people are looking for, through their years of research and the intelligence and experience of their founders. Well, I’m sorry to say, this one falls by the way side like all of the others, though their marketing has served them well given the types of deals they’ve been doing as of late (ie. Time.com, About.com, Marketwatch, etc.) [...]

]]> By: Mike Bijon http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-117034 Mike Bijon Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:10:19 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-117034 Congratulations to the blogosphere too. Anytime a major web publisher displays related blog posts it's a good thing, no matter how good or bad the relevance of what's shown. At least About.com had the brains to send the task out to a company that's actually involved and "gets" bloggers instead of hacking together a Franken-list of blog results. That being said, Sphere's results leave a lot to be desired. Unlike Technorati, TechMeme, or Bloglines (even Google for that matter) Sphere doesn't seem to take popularity (inbound links) into account - and although popularity-based algos seem to have a bit of lag before the rankings get settled out, popularity is a clear indicator of readability and relevance. Unfortuantely Sphere's formula is faster but seems to yield a lot of poorly written, wandering, or even splog posts. <a href="http://www.moogle1.com" rel="nofollow">-Mike</a> Congratulations to the blogosphere too. Anytime a major web publisher displays related blog posts it’s a good thing, no matter how good or bad the relevance of what’s shown. At least About.com had the brains to send the task out to a company that’s actually involved and “gets” bloggers instead of hacking together a Franken-list of blog results.

That being said, Sphere’s results leave a lot to be desired. Unlike Technorati, TechMeme, or Bloglines (even Google for that matter) Sphere doesn’t seem to take popularity (inbound links) into account - and although popularity-based algos seem to have a bit of lag before the rankings get settled out, popularity is a clear indicator of readability and relevance. Unfortuantely Sphere’s formula is faster but seems to yield a lot of poorly written, wandering, or even splog posts.

-Mike

]]> By: About.com says just “Sphere It!” http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115612 About.com says just “Sphere It!” Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:29:20 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115612 [...] Yesterday I wrote about new startups hooking up with large, established businesses to offer white label solutions or create partnerships to add additional streams of revenue. Last night there was news that, the blog search engine, Sphere has made a deal with About.com to offer its “Sphere It” technology to all of About.com’s content. Sphere will only show About.com’s content and it will be based on relevance and more intelligent content search than normal site search. Up until now About.com hasn’t made it easy for users to sort through their content. If you have a Sphere button on a site vs. a normal search isn’t that one way to make things easier and better? [...] [...] Yesterday I wrote about new startups hooking up with large, established businesses to offer white label solutions or create partnerships to add additional streams of revenue. Last night there was news that, the blog search engine, Sphere has made a deal with About.com to offer its “Sphere It” technology to all of About.com’s content. Sphere will only show About.com’s content and it will be based on relevance and more intelligent content search than normal site search. Up until now About.com hasn’t made it easy for users to sort through their content. If you have a Sphere button on a site vs. a normal search isn’t that one way to make things easier and better? [...]

]]> By: Dark Scorpion http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115399 Dark Scorpion Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:18:07 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115399 I dislike Sphere for several reasons: 1. Their search results are much worse than the search results of http://www.bloglines.com because Bloglines has real readership information. When you sort by popularity, Bloglines really knows which blogs are most read and which aren't read at all, so it usually returns very relevant results. 2. Sphere seems to be the kind of company which gets by on personal relationships and business deals instead of technical excellence. There's nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to use products from companies which really have (gasp) excellent products. 3. The web design of their site is simply very bad. They claim they have worked with a good web designer, but their web design is like a bad site from 1998-1999. 4. Their search results are very rarely good. But they keep claiming the search results are good. I dislike Sphere for several reasons:

1. Their search results are much worse than the search results of http://www.bloglines.com because Bloglines has real readership information. When you sort by popularity, Bloglines really knows which blogs are most read and which aren’t read at all, so it usually returns very relevant results.

2. Sphere seems to be the kind of company which gets by on personal relationships and business deals instead of technical excellence. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to use products from companies which really have (gasp) excellent products.

3. The web design of their site is simply very bad. They claim they have worked with a good web designer, but their web design is like a bad site from 1998-1999.

4. Their search results are very rarely good. But they keep claiming the search results are good.

]]> By: tony conrad http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115226 tony conrad Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:29:03 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115226 just wanted to add that the deal was done in partnership with clickability, our first and a long time partner who has done an amazing job of creating exposure for the sphere it technology. noah, john and their team have a suite of publisher tools neatly bundled in a cms platform - great stuff. we're working closely with them on a number of opportunities, so look for some more deal announcements shortly. just wanted to add that the deal was done in partnership with clickability, our first and a long time partner who has done an amazing job of creating exposure for the sphere it technology. noah, john and their team have a suite of publisher tools neatly bundled in a cms platform - great stuff. we’re working closely with them on a number of opportunities, so look for some more deal announcements shortly.

]]> By: Frank Gruber http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115203 Frank Gruber Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:01:02 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-115203 Congrats to Sphere - Tony Conrad and company! Congrats to Sphere - Tony Conrad and company!

]]> By: Innovation Zen http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-114851 Innovation Zen Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:39:23 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-114851 For the info you can check: http://www.podscope.com/ http://www.tveyes.com/ some of the services are in beta but you can already taste it. For the info you can check:

http://www.podscope.com/
http://www.tveyes.com/

some of the services are in beta but you can already taste it.

]]> By: Innovation Zen http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-114831 Innovation Zen Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:17:48 +0000 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/28/sphere-nails-long-terms-deal-with-aboutcom/#comment-114831 Searching through blogs and other “text” media is useful, although not technologically complex. In a few years (perhaps earlier) I think you will have companies and technologies enabling us to search “inside” any type of content – text, audio, video or any combination of them. Imagine being able to search all the podcasts that mentioned the phrase “it is a series of tubes” during one of their episodes. It would be very useful, and there are already scientists and organizations trying to develop such technology. Searching through blogs and other “text” media is useful, although not technologically complex. In a few years (perhaps earlier) I think you will have companies and technologies enabling us to search “inside” any type of content – text, audio, video or any combination of them.

Imagine being able to search all the podcasts that mentioned the phrase “it is a series of tubes” during one of their episodes. It would be very useful, and there are already scientists and organizations trying to develop such technology.

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