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February 26, 2007

New “Social” Dictionary

Michael Arrington

57 comments »

A new online dictionary and thesaurus launches today called WordSource. It’s main benefit over sites like Dictionary.com is the fact that the site is very cleanly designed and contains no advertisements. You can also look up a word by simply adding it to the URL (so word.sc/example will pull up the definition of “example”).

The site also has a number of social features, allowing users to upload photos that are relevant to the word, add tags, rate words, etc. Seems like a bit of overkill to bolt a social network onto an online dictionary, but there you go. If they hadn’t built it, someone else probably would have.

I tend to use Google to define words (just type your query as “define: example“), and many people use this Firefox plugin as well.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 12:23 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Teaching Better With Web 2.0 » How Useful Is This?

    February 26th, 2007 at 7:00 am

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  1. Oobie Doobie Kanoobie

    February 26th, 2007 at 12:28 am

    NM the mediocre review, I think this is cool - well done.

  2. Alaska Miller

    February 26th, 2007 at 12:52 am

    the site is almost to the point cruft.

  3. Morgan

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:02 am

    “If they hadn’t built it, someone else probably would have.”

    I think that’s exactly right. And I also think someone will find it worth something and probably purchase it or pay to partner with them eventually, so kudos to them for implementing a relatively simple idea and potentially making a few buck.

    On the other hand, it does seem like between Google, Answers.com, Dictionary.com and Wikipedia this is pretty well covered. Good luck to them.

  4. Velioncho

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Just a nicer look. Rest = null.
    Oh pls Why would I upload a photo to dictionary site? Imagine looking for “shit”.

  5. Michael Arrington

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:34 am

    Velioncho - be my guest - http://word.sc/shit. I be someone does do exactly that sometime soon.

  6. Yohay Elam

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:37 am

    Can every application turn “social”?
    I think that the site justs wants a ride on the “social” buzz.
    I don’t find it very useful.

  7. Ian McCallam

    February 26th, 2007 at 2:06 am

    social networking overkill! However, yes a very clean site. And I really like the search factor of “url/wordquery”

  8. Rajeev Vashisht

    February 26th, 2007 at 2:08 am

    I tend to use the hardbound plain oxford pocket dictionary, as I have no laptop or tablet.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  9. Neil

    February 26th, 2007 at 2:43 am

    Still no decent, free online dictionary for British English :-(

  10. Thejesh GN

    February 26th, 2007 at 2:50 am

    Another userid/password… no way!

  11. Alex

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:08 am

    I usually write a much more thoughtful post but this really doesn’t deserve it so all I will say is: lame.

    UrbanDictionary.com is so much cooler, even if it does serve a different purpose.

  12. Lucia

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:17 am

    Dictonary.com has a broader spectrum of words, includes quotes, does not require user/pwd, has its own “A Word a Day” mailing service…..I can’t see the advantage of this social dictionary over the traditional one. Mainly because the first three simple words I searched for came back: “Sorry, no words found”.

  13. george

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:31 am

    Use Answers.com!!!

  14. yongfook

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    my dictionary dashboard widget pwns any of the above solutions for speed.

  15. deannie

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:54 am

    Thumbs up or thumbs down? For a word in the dictionary? Eh, this too will pass.

  16. Allen Stern

    February 26th, 2007 at 5:00 am

    Privacy policy says they have ads (maybe they are coming.

    Also they state “No personally identifying information is ever collected on this site. ” - yet their registration form asks for a lot of PII. Name, birthday, postal code.

  17. arooaroo

    February 26th, 2007 at 5:02 am

    It seems to me that Word Source is a jazzed up version of the WordNet database used extensively in computation linguistics domains (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). A very handy resource for researchers to understand the similarity between words and senses, and for information retrieval-based ontologies, however, it’s not an expertly written dictionary from a lexicographic perspective. You’ll notice that sites like Dictionary.com and Answers.com have a WordNet section below the main dictionary section.

    Nell, you’ll be pleased to know that Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English is accessible online: http://www.ldoceonline.com/. It is British English, although it does show American English variants too.

  18. Brad

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    I think people underestimate the power of natural search. This company is obviously thinking in those terms with the URL structure described in the article. If they do it right it will have an enormous amount of traffic very quickly.

  19. anonymouse

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:29 am

    this is utterly pointless in concept. yet another “social” site that relies on users participating in social activities yet providing no incentive whatsoever to do so.

  20. rbowles

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:47 am

    Hey why havent my other !?! comments posted? -

  21. Drama 2.0

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:51 am

    http://word.sc/useless

  22. markus941

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:53 am

    I’ll stick with Urban Dictionary, thanks.

  23. fishbrain

    February 26th, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Ah, the possibilities: “I bet when you look up stupid in the dictionary, they have your picture!”

  24. Scott N.

    February 26th, 2007 at 7:00 am

    You can also look up words by typing “dict example” into the firefox address bar. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to choose your preferred dictionary site to use with this function, but I’m not sure where it is.

    I agree with you Michael, if they didn’t do it someone else would have.

  25. Bryan

    February 26th, 2007 at 7:20 am

    I too use Google to define words. I like the fact that Google isn’t overkill.

  26. Anonymous

    February 26th, 2007 at 7:42 am

    what is the their business model? Are they simply aiming to sell the idea to someone else? I just don’t see how they plan on making money.

    Also, the url is somewhat hard to remember. I don’t think I’ve ever typed the .sc TLD. If you type wordsource . com, you get to see some photos of sushi on a domain-squater’s hope to make some quick money on PPC ads.

  27. Hasan Jafri

    February 26th, 2007 at 7:47 am

    It’s nice and clean and I like it. Makes you wonder what’s next though: Social Wiktionary? Make up your own words and host lexical wars over definitions?

  28. rack pallet

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    They don’t have a business model. Most proftiable companies will have this before they empliment aynthing else.

    - I think (1) they didn’t invest much time nor money (hopefully)
    (2) If they don’t sell the idea soon, they will have ads

    with ads it will be another dictionary.com and also the Value Add for the socialable features is very minimal.

    - proof of nothing this is, Richard B

  29. j-bro

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:12 am

    Yes, but from what source do these words come from? Where is the information populated from?

  30. iwek

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:36 am

    Interesting idea…I made WordMingle for fun a couple months ago and its also about words and definitions.

  31. Great Dane

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    FOUNDERS AT WORK
    http://www.demonoid.com/files/.....&sort=

  32. b5media

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    Guess it will take a while to get some common terms in there. I just searched for SEO, SEM, and CPM and got nothing???

  33. David P

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:49 am

    Zzzzz… Only a old man would think this is a good idea.

    iwek: I like your WordMingle idea, but instead of the script only pull from Flickr, you should have it pull the definitions from other sites also because your database is horrific. You could also use this idea to grab stuff in UrbanDictionary.

    When I first saw this post I was worried they might of actually took some good ideas that I do have about a word site. Looks like they need to hire a creative development team.

  34. Christopher Sisk

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:50 am

    Nice design… but I agree… Google is still faster for me.

  35. Stanmiller

    February 26th, 2007 at 8:57 am

    WordSource still has a way to go. I really don’t see anything new here. In fact, I see less.

    I prefer thefreedictionary.com.

    They implement ajax, are ad lite, and have a feature where you can double-click words in a definition which takes you to the entry for the clicked word.

  36. iwek

    February 26th, 2007 at 9:10 am

    David: Thanks for the input. When I have some time, I will definitly set up automatic definitions from other sites and I will look into UrbanDictionary. I had a free weekend and I just put the website up for fun so its pretty simple.

  37. Fred T

    February 26th, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Try looking up the word “hoplologist” I only found it in one dictionary.
    http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definitions/ …….plus this dictionary has English to Other Language translation options with a click and is free also.

  38. web 2.0 innovations

    February 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    have heard that a company plans to use wordspedia.com to launch something similar to word.sc but without populating the data from third party sources, just like what the word.sc’s case looks like to me… there users can provide descriptions and definitions to words, phrases and whole sentences, normally not available on wikipedia, answers.com and dictionary.com etc, etc

  39. Jean-Michel Decombe

    February 26th, 2007 at 9:55 am

    I do not see this site as a threat to dictionary.com/thesaurus.com at all. What matters is the content (definitions, synonyms, antonyms), and theirs is vastly inferior. I use dictionary.com/thesaurus.com a lot and they do the job very well, and better than anyone else I know. What bugs me with 90% of the sites that jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon at every opportunity is that they lack vision, originality, and purpose. This is in fact why they launch before they are really ready to face the world. Because they expect the world to enlighten them about the vision, originality, and purpose they sorely lack.

  40. Philip

    February 26th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Nice and clean, with the exception of the internal pages. While they maintain the nice look, it starts to get a bit cluttered with all the social networking wonks.

    Honestly, why do you need social networking on a factual dictionary?

  41. Chad Sexton

    February 26th, 2007 at 10:11 am

    Where do they get their definitions? Are there opensource/public domain dictionaries with current significance?

  42. Breaking Free

    February 26th, 2007 at 10:15 am

    I guess it goes to show that designing a new user interface is all you need to add value to a product. No new product idea required!
    B

  43. John

    February 26th, 2007 at 10:31 am

    Someone else already has done it, sort of. And you’ve already covered it.

  44. Shilo M

    February 26th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

    Very lame. and yet another userid/pass. Can’t wait for openid to get massively adopted.

    Just use answers.com/WORD
    or urbandictionary.com

  45. ...some Drifter

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    i kind of like the concept, but urbandictionary takes my vote still.

  46. O

    February 26th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Isnt this just a cleaner urbandictionary?

  47. Raquel

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    Is like Wikipedia or Wiktionary !!

  48. wanderer

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Looks like a great site to me. I don’t know why everyone here is complaining that it’s like urbandictionary - this is nothing like urbandictionary. This site’s goal is to provide a quick way to look up REAL words…not to let users add their own…

    I like it and I’ll be using it from now on.

  49. How to start a clothing line from scratch

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    I think this is a great site for bloggers …I sometimes find myself forgetting the meaning of a word!

  50. LittleDanzig

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:33 pm

    So I guess the burning question is: How long will it take for the definition of every word in the English language to directly relate to the Middle East or Sony vs. Nintendo?

  51. Spud

    February 26th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    I can’t find myself getting that excited over this one. A dictionary site is just not exciting no matter what “features” it has. It is still just a dictionary site.

  52. Yos

    February 26th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

    nice but very limited… will have to stick with Urban for slang and Abbreviations.com for abbreviations…

  53. omniraju

    February 26th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

    Thanks for putting the site and the investing the effort.

    I like the simplicity, the look and feel and the ability to do the word lookup programmatically.

    Not sure about content source, quality for now or how long it will take to develop good content. Also, not sure about the business model or will it stay a small project.

  54. HenryG

    February 27th, 2007 at 1:23 am

    Well all I see is an interface to wiktionary….I use http://www.answers.com and http://www.metaglossary.com to cover everything I need. Combination of two gives a complete picture of any terms/phrase etc. I don’t see an advantage with this site.

  55. eric

    February 27th, 2007 at 8:35 am

    Hey, Arrington: Glad you found a dictionary. Look up “it’s.” Then look up “its.”

  56. Velioncho

    February 28th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    Good one (#55) :)

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