http://anand.ty...e-haystack.html

Wrong. What about videos, images, blog posts (docs, sure, but can’t be ranked the same way as general web docs), widgets, slideshows, quizzes, FB apps, tweets, blah blah.

Might pay to think before you speak

Simple answer is : Bollocks. The web is a collection of documents, WTF is Anand is talking about? His words are taken seriously by the uninformed out there on the web.

I wish they’ll build out the product with their most important use case in mind, i.e., a starting point for researching a topic. That means bookmarking, sharing and commenting capabilities.

One of them is the breadth of topics: I haven’t seen any other resource on the web that can produce topic overviews for topics that don’t confirm to any whitelist: e.g., the topic “charles lindbergh kidnapping”, or “profumo scandal” may be expressed in so many different ways, and other “similar resources” would simply default to plain vanilla search results for such queries/topics that are not expressed in a “canonical” way.

Another differentiator is the ability to lay out the page contextually: e.g., seinfeld, aaliyah, and “breast cancer” all pick content from very different sources and arrange it based on relevance.

Finally, we’re also able to present the user with a lot more information for topics that are somewhat related to their query. E.g., search for “Tony Parker”, and you’ll see news about Spurs on the bottom right rail. Again, this is based on fairly advanced categorization, and not on any whitelist.

The thing is that users haven’t really clamored for a change, so websites like these leave me underwhelmed. What precise user need are they responding to? Can any one from the Kosmix team articulate this without making my eyes cross?

Another problem with multiple starting points is that EACH ONE has to be pretty darned sensible, because each one is taking up valuable real estate (I mean, at least fix your candidate queries, guys, “waterboarding” gives me “John Read”, wtf?!?) If you go the GOOG route, then with ten results and users clicking 40% on the first two, your optimization targets are highly focused.

PLUS (I am not done yet,) you have the problem that you just fetch RSS feeds or whatever from each site that you “partner” with — but no one’s figured out how to transmit FUNCTIONALITY in feeds, not just DATA. Milud, exhibit A: video results on Truveo http://www.truv...arding&uqs=), and the same stuff from Truveo but displayed on Kosmix (http://www.kosm...2-o-r-r-Video-s) All the tabs, and the From CNN box, are gone!

Sure, someone could create the ultimate search OS, that pops up multiple applications for each type of search result content, and that would be truly game changing, but imagining that this sort of baby step will get you there, is just plain hype.

It’s information over loaded. We already have so many search engine and social media sites doing the same things. It doesn’t really add value to the Internet.