People-powered search engine Mahalo will soon have some competition from a stealth startup called YouBundle. If you go to YouBundle’s site now, there is nothing other than a landing page. But we got our hands on a couple screen shots from the private beta (click above for a larger image and see topic page below) and the guidelines sent to beta testers (reproduced after the break).
Like Mahalo, YouBundle is more of a Web guide than an actual search engine. Bundles of Web links, YouTube videos, Flickr images, Amazon product descriptions, and uploaded photos and documents are created around different topics. These can be anything from “VC Funding Resources” to “Tibetan Buddhism” to “Apple Rumors Sites.” Bundlers add titles, tags, and descriptions to each bundle. The company explains to beta testers in its guidelines:
A bundle is a collection of your expertise on any given subject. A bundle should NOT BE a completely exhaustive list of links to cover every possible point of the subject. It should rather be a finely tuned and specialized list of links to relevant information on the subject. The idea is NOT to replicate the 1st page of Google or a link farm. We want every single link in the bundle to be tested, relevant and offering quality information. Just because a link comes from an authority site such as Wikipedia, does not mean that you have to include the link – we want flavor and variety – not sterility.
You should consider a bundle your work of art. . . . Remember the purpose is not to get AS many links as possible. The purpose is to create a well balanced bundle with many different types of links of only the highest quality.
Unlike Mahalo, YouBundle does not rely on a paid staff of editors to create its topic guides. It is all done by the community. While Mahalo does incorporate some social feedback as well, it is more controlled. Each submission is reviewed before being included on a Mahalo page. This policy is one way to control spam from clogging up the system.
On YouBundle, the community does all the work. So in this sense it is more akin to Topicle or Wikia Search. The latter is a slightly different beast, since it truly is an algorithmic search engine whose results are re-ordered and modified by the community. But like Wikia Search, YouBundle relies on its community to flag spam and inappropriate content. Any bundles tagged “SPAM,” “PORN,” or “TOS,” are reviewed and moderated. (The TOS tag refers to bundles that violate the site’s Terms of Service).
The YouBundle community is also be able to vote the best topic pages up by “bumping” them, or vote them down by “dumping” them. Dumps are “anonymous in order to prevent retribution dumps,” says the guideines. Members can also “bag and tag” other people’s bundles. Bagging a bundle is like bookmarking it as one of your favorites, and once you do that you can up to three tags to improve the categorization of the site.
I was not able to test the site out myself, so I can’t say if it is producing better results than Mahalo, Topicle or Wikia Search. But the steep rise in Mahalo’s traffic, much of it driven by the SEO juice its pages have, is no doubt a motivating factor here. According to comScore, Mahalo attracted 2.6 million unique visitors worldwide in April, up from zero when it launched last summer. Total pageviews were 5.6 million.
Disclosure: Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is a partner of ours who helps us put on the TechCrunch50 conference. Neither TechCrunch, its employees, nor Michael Arrington owns any stake in Mahalo.
Here is the full text of the guidelines sent to YouBundle beta testers:
Bundling Guidelines
A bundle is a collection of your expertise on any given subject. A bundle should NOT BE a completely exhaustive list of links to cover every possible point of the subject. It should rather be a finely tuned and specialized list of links to relevant information on the subject. The idea is NOT to replicate the 1st page of Google or a link farm. We want every single link in the bundle to be tested, relevant and offering quality information. Just because a link comes from an authority site such as Wikipedia, does not mean that you have to include the link – we want flavor and variety – not sterility.
You should consider a bundle your work of art. In order to assist you in creating this work of art, we are able to Parse and display thumbnails and unique information for the following types of links
* Web Page links- We will call and display a thumbnail of the site screen shot
* YouTube Videos – Just enter the address URL and we will call and display a Thumbnail of the video and relevant video information
* Photos – If you enter a link of a photo extension (.jpg, png, gif etc…) We will call and display the thumbnail of this.
* Flickr Photos – All you have to do is enter the Flickr page of the photo and we will automatically grab and display the thumbnail.
* Documents- PDF’s, .DOCs ad Excel will be displayed in their own section.
* Links to Other Bundles. These will also be in their own section with a preview of the other bundle. Good when you need to refer to another bundle with more specific or generalized information on the subject in questions
* Amazon Links- Consider to include a link or two to a relevant Amazon product. We will automatically grab the photo thumbnail for displayRemember the purpose is not to get AS many links as possible. The purpose is to create a well balanced bundle with many different types of links of only the highest quality.
Describing your bundle.
* Your Bundle Title is going to be the First and only thing that many people will see. Therefore make it unique, focused and interesting as possible.
* Your Description can be any length and should give a concise summary of your bundle subject and maybe even a little history and unique content.
* Your Bundle Tags are how you would subcategorize your bundle and can be used in a number of ways. For example, lets say that you made a bundle on 67 Ford Mustang’s. The category of choice for that bundle could either be under Transportation. However the category choice is a very general thing. To further sub-catagorize your bundle you will want to add tags. Tags can be both specific to the bundle and used in other fashions. First lets talk about the obvious method. You could for example tag this bundle
o Ford
o Mustang
o 1967
o Fastbacks
o Hot Cars
* Having these tags will make it show up in searches used for these and also cross reference with other bundles sharing the same tag. You can add up to 10 tags when you create a bundle
* The other way to use tags is not to directly describe the contents of your bundle, but maybe to identify it as part of some bundle association or group. For example maybe I am part of an internet forum on mustangs called ‘Mustang Talk.’ I can also tag my bundle ‘Mustang Talk’ (or whatever tag we agree on) and then on the forum I just have to refer the other users to come to youbundle and search for that unique tag – which will return everything returned as such. The functionality is open to be used as your creativity dictates
Browsing and Tagging other peoples bundlesA Unique and fun feature of YouBundle that can keep you occupied forever is our Bag and Tag feature. This allows you to do 2 different things
* BAG – Essentially like saving the bundle to your favorites. Meaning that it will be there in your ‘Favorite Bag’ to go back to and reference any time you like. This is a great way to bookmark your favorite bundle for easy access
* TAG – Just like when you make a bundle – you are allowed to add tags, when you browse other peoples bundles you can add up to 3 tags to those bundles as well. When you tag another persons bundle – a number of things will happen
o That tag gets added to the bundle Tag Cloud – so it will cause the tag to grow in weight.
o That tag gets added to your personal tag cloud on your homepage and associated with that bundle. This being another way for you to categorize and easily access the bundle
* By tagging you can help to categorize other peoples bundles into the correct place and at the same time increase your collection. Another very useful feature of being able to Tag other peoples bundles is to really put them in their place.
* Meaning that you can start clubs and tag the bundles according to the club. Something like ‘Best Bundle’ or the likes. You can also help the community with quality control. Instead of reporting spam via a link, we are asking community members to tag bundles containing spam links as ‘SPAM’ and our Moderators will routinely check this tag and delete the offending bundles and accounts. Even if another user has already given the tag to the offending bundle, please tag it yourself as well as the more people that tag it – the faster it will be brought to our attention. A full list of moderation tags you can use are as follows (Please use all CAPS)
o SPAM - We will review and take action on bundles marked as SPAM
o PORN - We will immediately delete bundles with links to PORN
o TOS - Bundles that link to pages that violate our TOS, such as pages that.
o BOTD - Bundle of the Day. If you want to recommend a Bundle for Bundle of the Day. Please tag it BOTD and we will review and consider.Bundle Rating
You can also show your approval or distaste for a bundle by bumping or dumping it. When you Bump a bundle, your username will show up on the bundle to show that you approve. However when you Dump a bundle, it will be anonymous in order to prevent retribution dumps.
FeedBack
As we are currently in Beta Testing – this is a work in Progress and we are constantly changing things and listening to your feedback. If you find a bug, have suggestion, or just want to chat a bit about the industry, please use email us at
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Almost as worthless as Mahalo, but not quite.
You call this competition? The UI isn’t even half as nice as Mahalo’s.
could be quite useful actually. i see how lots of people could use this.
it needs to do interface work. simple and intuitive being key words.
Check out http://www.zigtag.com. To me this is - half secretly - turning into a real human powered search engine. And btw: it keeps my bookmark chaos at bay in a very elegant and convenient way.
People powered search, heh.
A few years ago Google had an April Fool’s joke that described their “PigeonRank” search algorithm: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
I guess Mahalo and these guys didn’t get the joke. They thought that if they used people instead of pigeons, they’d beat Google.
Sounds like Squidoo…
The name is too copycatish - are we still letting coders think up domain names???
Any copycat sounding name dilutes the brand’s potential marketing power.
exactly the concept of one of my side project prototypes related to “stock and flow”.
i’ll have to try this out.
I love sites that focus on making it easy or cool for content creators but horribly complex for visitors. Also, without a cheerleader like Jason Calacanis or Jimmy Wales, this one is destined for failure.
Does anyone here know a person who (regularly) uses Mahalo?
I don’t know any such people.
As a matter of fact, I bet less than 1% of my friends and acquaintances has ever heard of Mahalo.
How does Mahalo get 2.5M+ UVs a month? Purely SEO, right?
Painters London could be quite useful actually. i see how lots of people could use this.
Does anyone here know a person
Painters Decorators London: I know a guy.
I’ve never used Mahalo and no one I know does either. Is Mahalo even a real company? I thought it was a vanity project.
I dislike both sites and think both are adsense traps
I predict Mahalo will enter the dead pool by the end of the year - you heard it here first!
I guess this is their original demo site: http://www.youbundle.com/index2.html
Heard it here first? We’ve been hearing that since the start, guy.
Mahalo’s main competition is called scalability, you stupid fuck. No matter how much TechCrunch pumps up Mahalo it will never stand the test of scaling. The fact that you even do is a testament to what a bunch of hacks you are.
Not sure how you got the Screen Shots- but I suppose it is ok - either wading in or being thrown in - still got to get in the water sometime. The Platform engine is finished and we are currently finishing up with the UI. What you see for the styling is more or less place holder as we complete that area. We hope to be ready to apply to the TC50 by the end of June.
I don’t know if I would agree that we are competition or not with Mahalo. Mahalo seems to be really into a directed search experience which is good for what it is, and I see them with much success in that field.
YouBundle is not trying to human generate search results as suggested by some - rather we are giving users a platform to arrange a Bundle like a form of art. The results of end bundle will be subjective to the individual user who creates it.
Meaning that we can have 10 different bundles on the same subject- with ten completely different angles and groups of links. And each one of these will be correct. We give the users rating mechanisms so they can decide which bundle gets to the top of the page on that given search.
In that way we are not ‘defining’ the search result, rather giving the community the tools to leave creative and useful bundles for others to explore and rate.
@ some dude - but I’m the man you aren’t so thats the way it goes….
While, incredibly, I actually did use Mahalo a couple times over the past month to get past some snags in GTAIV, they’re both doomed.
Techcrunch keeps talking about sites like Mahalo as if they are successful. 5 MM pageviews per month at a $.50 cpm, which is all a site like that is worth, is only $2500 per month in revenue. After $20MM in funding, and blogosphere hype, that does not sound like a success to me, and others should not be trying to emulate them. Also, their minimum wage-like revenues are at the mercy of Google’s search results.
All of this hyping of worthless models by conflicted bloggers is leading to 10 new sites per day launching, chasing after vapor-fortunes. Reminds me of 1998!
Techcrunch keeps talking about sites like Mahalo as if they are successful. Five million pageviews per month at a $.50 cpm, which is all a site like that is worth, is only $2500 per month in revenue. After $20MM in funding, and blogosphere hype, that does not sound successful to me, and others should not be trying to follow them. Also, their minimum wage-like revenues are at the mercy of Google’s search results.
All of this over-hyping of worthless models by conflicted bloggers is leading to 20 new sites per day launching, chasing after vapor-fortunes. Reminds me of 1998!
leave mahalo alone. leave wikia alone. they are trying. running on old reputations, a little blind hope and finanaced by someone else’s money. what is wrong with that. yes gentlemen we are in a bubble. lotta hype…..nothing ripe! there is no future google killer. just alot of wanna bes that have as much chance of competing with google as they do competing to become a major oil corporation. your gonna have to have a major game changer to be the google slayer of tomorrow. my advice to these companies is get a better domain name or merge with a strategic multichannel domain portfolio. you cant walk in the major league ball park without a premium vertical keyphrase domain, commonsense, easy to understand. not not a domain we need a hawaian dictionary to learn or getting lost in the 100’s of wiki related domains. MyLocator.com and there 1300 vertical keyphrase domain network has no competition. Location engines are the future of search my friends, and he who has the greatest network of location engines just might win the game. NetworkLocator.com.
Well, we see that most out there, me included to some degree, love to say that Mahalo and other social search initiatives suck.
But let’s be constructive for a moment: How could someone use knowledge/opinion of people to improve search results???
Google might be king, but their search results suck. I’m fascinated by the possibility of social search, but I believe the right formula isn’t out there yet. Love to see you ideas.
Thanks for the interesting posts so far. I figure most of the people posting on this wall may know what its like to have a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug. Does anybody here run a small business or is currently in a start-up? Are you hoping to grow to the size of a Google, a Microsoft, an Apple, a Nintendo, a Sales Force? You might want to check out how the Natural Laws of the the universe and an understanding of quantum physics can really mentally train and condition you to rise to success like that of a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergei Brinn, etc. Check out this site more some tips:
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?rta=blog
Mahalo is candidate for web2’s worst sites that got funding. Other than Web2 people no one has ever heard of mahalo. What a waste of energy and money.
Dude ! Do you Mahalo? Seriously
A useful tool, perhaps for info, for sure to browse. If they can manage to keep true to concept of the user community creating the best of the best links - I think they have something. A challenge will be to attract a higher level of users/bundlers to populate the site with well thought out links. Always wanted a trusted reference, perhaps this time…….
I predict half the commenters on this post will be in the deadpool sooner than Mahalo. Ignorance must be bliss.
Mahalo is one big link farm that GOOG will pop one day and rightly so.
All their uniques just come from Jason’s 25+ twitters a day x his 27 thousand followers. He is totally smart but Mahalo is a sht thing and being Mr. Internet is going to bite him in the ass big time, think Netspace.
I agree…if you look at the “SEO juice” that Mahalo gets, the vast majority of the long-tail pages have the same 10 - 15 bloggers that “independently” link to the same pages…hmmm. They do have some pages with really robust content which gets picked up on blogs, but that’s the exception…look at their clickstream data and you’ll see.
@15, me too , I don’t even bother looking on Mahalo, let alone use it for anything.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Erik, You consistently write the best pieces on TC.
Nice article.
will it also be a piece of shit like mahalo? or will it be a bundle of shit?
The more users, the more content, this could be a player…but users/content don’t grow on trees…
@36 @37
actually you two are both right- take some good shit, make some fertizlier and then feed it to the tree and it will grow some content. now where did I put my shit…..
Does anyone here know a person
Rollyo.com has been around for about a couple years now, I think. Same general concept and I don’t hear much about them anymore. Is this just a dead idea?
I think the problem here is… most people don’t have a problem with Google search yet. I’m not saying this isn’t an interesting problem they’re solving, I just don’t see the large adoption happening.
An easy answer to all those shooting the site down BEFORE IT’S EVEN BEEN LAUNCHED - don’t visit it. Simple. If you don’t like what you’re watching on TV, switch it off - don’t sit watching it for an hour, complaining about how crap it is…
Morons.
The idea to stimulate experts to create ’starting pages’ for others, on any possible topic, as opposed to using standard search engines, is not that bad, providing: A) there is some ‘value’ for the experts to put effort in such a page B) there is some ‘monitoring’ on the pages created, in order to prevent lots of crap entries.
http://www.gemzies.com provides a virtual stage for those who are ‘proved’ to be called an expert. In contrast to YouBundle, Gemzies is already ‘live’ to welcome these fellow experts to our communities. We might need to talk to TechCrunch about this
YouBundle certainly looks like a good alternative to Mahalo. The aspect of being less controlled and directed in greater sense by the community has it’s setbacks. We’ll have to wait to see how it plays out. Here is a Q&A session with Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo. He talks about Mahalo and human-powered search - very good stuff!
scoble has a good mahalo piece on fastcompany:
http://www.fastcompany.tv/vide.....rch-engine
OK, so anything with a porn link will be deleted outright. So if I write a bot that adds a porn link to every page, I can delete the whole site outright. Fun stuff.
Video interview with Youbundle’s co-founder and invites to the private beta on HyveUp. Click here.
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Just because a link comes from an authority site such as Wikipedia