Los Angeles based startup Listphile is aiming to bring list making into the Wiki and Mahalo space.
Listphile is a free collaborative list building tool that offers the openness of a wiki with the structure of a database. The company aims to create a vast and easy to use online platform that people will utilize for learning, working together, and socializing.
Lists can include Google Map Mashups, video and images, and users are able to create database pages for specific topics as well.
Examples include the The Open Surf Atlas: an open atlas of surf spots on the planet, with video, images, maps and data specific to each spot, Earth Friendly Tips for the Home, Yoda Quotes (with video) and Oyster Varieties – a list of oyster types commonly eaten and cultivated, with photos.
To be honest, when I first saw the word “lists” I was initially skeptical as to what ListPhile might offer, but having spent some time on the site I was pleasantly surprised. It looks and feels like a Maholo style consumer play; the information available isn’t as thorough as Wikipedia but it’s feels more friendly. I’d think it would be an appealing offering to the non-geek set, although having said there is nothing stopping the site from appealing to everyone.
ListPhile has some experienced people behind it; Caterina Fake (Flickr) is on the advisory board and founder Steve de Brun has worked with a variety of startups and also worked with News Corp. A startup to watch.
>>A startup to watch.
Watch it fail? Come on, this has to be one of the silliest ideas for a startup ever. This is a feature that almost nobody needs and anyone with basic coding skills can whip out in a day.
Web2.0 is now like a giant Monty Python sketch.
mike
as I noted in the post I was skeptical at first, but it’s a usable page that feels a cut above some a lot of the other stuff we see regularly. Again, not one for tech folk, it’s a Mahalo space play.
The information can only improve once they have more user input I think. Without that well, it will just another good idea.
I’m not so sure that comparing something to Mahalo gives it a lot of street cred. Not so sure that you could call Mahalo successful
Matthew
I’m yet to find a convincing argument that Mahalo isn’t a good idea; what I do see is a lot of people saying they don’t like it without looking at the broader consumer (non-tech) appeal of the product
This sounds to me to be similar to what Freebase was supposed to offer – the concept of wiki and database combined.
Has anyone here compared the two?
@Duncan – I don’t see how Mahalo is innovative. A hand built search engine doesn’t appeal to me, and I have already found spam-ish links in the service. At least Mahalo is creating content and not just another copy cat platform like most of the companies out there.
hold on
HOLD ON
are you telling me that i can create LISTS of data and they will store them on the web????
marge, clear all my afternoon meetings
Fake:
Freebase: has real technology behind it (proprietary graph storage),
apppeals to geeks, its something you shouldnt do in any other sense of the term
Listphile: has Ruby on Rails behind it. targeted to Yelp crowd – not Wikipedia editors, not Geeks.. the name.. doesnt roll off your tongue or stick with you though
hope that sums it up
Most of the maps, search and other functionalities are blocked by our company firewall as “Proxy Avoidance”.. Bad coding
Be nice if you could change the map. i’m in cz and mapy.cz is so much better than google maps, or at least if you could maximise the view of it or right click to add an entry. Also, if you could add pictures from external sites (flickr etc) that would be better. Agree with David that it’s very open to just being filled with spam nonsense, but I guess you can say that about most ‘user generated content’ sites to some degree.
WRT Mahalo… Duncan, Mahalo’s been a giant failure so far. Look at their numbers! They’re basically a DMOZ v2. It’s crazy to think that people would prefer a small number of searches to the whole web. Google has done an amazing job at perfecting search results and to think that we’d go back to the old days of some guy going over billions of pages manually?! Ridiculous.
Here’s a good reason why Mahalo is a bad idea: top searches CHANGE all the time and Mahalo can’t keep up!
There is evidence that this is a growing market… check out all the competition out there… ListAfterList.com, OnMyList.com, TadaList.com, … even Amazon has jumped in with Unspun.com… being biased as to say there is no way it will make it is naive! What do you think ppl said when they first saw Facebook and MySpace?
Lennox Buttler a womaniser-bad influence -have babies all over the world -what out he cannot be trusted with money–bad business man-he will destroy your business if you let him