In a post last month I wrote about Powerset COO Steve Newcomb’s use of predictive modeling to guess early growth rates so that they have enough hardware to scale. Good for them, I said, for releasing some of the data publicly. And I recommended they go one step further and release the predictive models themselves:
Powerset should publish the model itself (without the specific Powerset assumptions of course) and let other startups tweak it for their own use. Most new companies don’t have the excel jockeys or the time to do this kind of work. Any competitive issues would be overshadowed by the considerable goodwill (and link juice) they’d get from doing this.
And that’s exactly what they are going to do. Newcomb says they’ll release the models in the next few weeks, minus Powerset-specific data. Don’t expect to see these on Google Docs, though (a perfect place to dump them, except that Google is who Powerset is gunning for). They’ll make the spreadsheets available for download or let people view them on the web via a Flash viewer.
What a non story, are you enamored with these guys or what ?
1st some screenshots, whoopee
2nd they pre announce that they are going to release some empty spreadsheet, complete with some exponential curve and charts I bet, double whoopee
yet you keep pumping them up vis a vis google, something just seems fishy
A little more … what a let down … I wait all day for another post after the virtual world one, and this is what I get … sigh … will wait for the next one though
Ok, is this news? I hope this is the last Powerset post until they launch if at all. For some reason I already have a negative impression about this company without even seeing it.
As part of the alternate search crowd, I find it amazing how much of a focus is placed on ‘beating’ Google. There seems to be a notion that developing natural language search technologies or knocking together gimmicky interfaces will somehow dislodge the hundreds of millions of users who find great success and might I add, comfort when using Google.
Is a Google search really that bad or inaccurate? Isn’t having to do a little manual rooting part of the fun of searching and surfing the web. Isn’t the journey sometimes the reward? Doesn’t a little serendipity make life a whole lot more interesting?
The perfect results page does not exist and never will… and beating Google will take one hell of a behavioral modification of the planet’s internet users.
Find out whose blogging about Powerset:
http://blogs.fi....php?q=powerset
It’s the old “evil empire” syndrom…
The guy on top is targeted sooner or later.
Carmelo Lisciotto
Make it a facebook app and gather their first few thousand users explicitly?
How about asking them to release their search engine so we can all try it once and never use it again?
predictive modeling to guess early growth rates …
a) Hype
b) Tripe
c) Pipe dream
d) Who f*cking cares
Show us tangible sales results with real customers who are using your software !
to #7 … how true how true !
Where’d the Ajaxwindows.com post go?!
I just find it so laughable that they are trying to beat Google, they will be lucky to beat Ask. The problem with all this non-press is that they are killing their product before it even comes out. Over hype will put Powerset into the Deadpool faster than Clown Co (and when was the last time we heard about that crap?). I’m at the stage right now where I won’t even try it just out of spite. I hope Google buries them and does it fast.
Last I heard from them they acquired someone.
Why is everyone here hate POWERSET.COM so much?
Can you guys stop mocking powerset.com?
They haven’t launched the product yet…
Powerset reminds me of a company from 2004 named Dipsie.com. Dipsie purported to have a Google killer in the works. They kept saying the product was coming. Sadly, it never came and they faded away without as much as a whimper.
Powerset should lead with their core product not ridiculous predictive modeling documents. They should launch their product and succeed or fail based solely on the quality of their search experience. Right now they’re all talk and no product.
Wow you can really tell what kind of company they are. I doubt the Google guys jerked off to Excel predictions all day. They concentrated on making a great search engine and they scaled it with blood and sweat — not careful planning.
I’m betting against Powerset — big time.
I am certainly not betting against Powerset here, but I do have to agree with posts 14 and 15, Stone and John P from a marketing/positioning point of view. Dipsie was a classic boom/bust hype play beyond reproach, I knew them well. Unless Powerset is aiming to be first *native* 3rd party app for iPhone (sorry for the plug), it would probably do well to put its weight behind the search product with a laser beam focus, first and foremost. Lesson #1 in marketing: You are not your target market. No matter how well we think we can step outside ourselves and be like the core x hundred million searchers, we can’t. Example: can the average end user/searcher appreciate the value of one particular predictive model versus another? It may just muddy the waters for them. Better to let the users quietly discover the end results of the search experience themselves. This approached worked for at least one solid search co. I can think of…
– R
An excel “predictive model”? I believe their are several fitting functions that excel provides out of the box.
What is surprising on these threads is the assumptions that Google does not already employ NLP in the background. How does one know that is not the case? Maybe Google does and when the NLP score is lower than the keywordese score you just get the best that is possible? Google now has more machine learning, linguists and related experts than anyone in the world.
I suggest you look up the articles under ‘Natural Language Processing’ on the Google website:
http://labs.goo...com/papers.html
Clearly, Google has been working on this heavily since 2005/2006.
well,
Let’s just first see what and how powerset would look and work like and then judge. However, from what we have seen on web, so far, there is a couple of start up search engines that left us with the feeling of something that might work things out and take 0.001% from the Google’s market share, the first one is hakia.com and the second is NosyJoe.com.
On the other hand, if we base our judgment solely on the information publicly available about powerset, which is not that much, it would probably be better one, but unless we all see powerset in action the only feeling left today is about well thought, planned and executed hype, buzz and public relation…
Otherwise, best of luck to powerset, we all need Google alternatives on the search market.
Post 7/8 are DEAD ON!
– stop posting until I can go and test / once and probably never use again.
– Mich want a company to profile / Think
http://www.thinkature.com
– I found it via / digg / pretty cool
-RB
Are the people at powerset paying all the bloggers to create this hype or what???
The site doesnt even exist and they have tons of money invested on them, I hope that they dont be like dipsie.
And even if powerset eventually releases and turns out to be the BEST search engine out there, people will still not use it because people are so emotional towards Google.