Center’d, a local activity guide headed by former Yahoo Local GM Jennifer Dulski, is getting a major upgrade today. Alongside a completely revamped homepage, the site is launching a reworked search engine that it says should outperform the keyword searches found on most other local sites.
Center’d has compiled a database of around 1 million entries for various activities, each of which is categorized into a number of intent-based classifications. To do this, the site has spidered through the web analyzing ‘conversations’ taking place around each entry, taking context into account to determine if a review or comment is positive or negative. It then maps out the results in bar graphs, as seen below. Dulski says that this kind of semantic analysis is better than standard keyword search, and it helps eliminate inaccurate matches – for example it would prevent a review that said “this place is not for kids” from appearing under a query for restaurants “for kids”.
Using this database, the site can also generate city guides for users with a variety of different criteria (for example, you could generate a guide for San Francisco with romance in mind, or you could create one that would take you through the city on the cheap). The site is launching with support for twelve cities intitially, with plans to ramp up to more in the near future. Dulski says that these guides are mostly-automated (which will help it scale), though there is some editor control involved.
Center’d emerged about a year ago from the ashes of Fatdoor, a social network for neighbors. Until now its primary focus has been to serve as a local search engine and event planning site, and now it’s adding a new goal to that list: helping people figure out what to do with their day. Dulski says that many people have been coming to the site to find something to do, without anything in particular in mind. As with the city guides, users can select from a variety of criteria like ‘cheap’ or ‘for kids’, and ask the site to generate a list of possible activities.
In the next few weeks Center’d will also be deploying its suggestion engine to the iPhone, with a mobile application that will allow users to generate a day-long itinerary based on the amount of money they’re able to spend and the type of activities they’d like to persue.
centerd.com could become the craigslist of effluvia. Or the Wikipedia of databasing epistemology valuation $2 billion
If Jennifer Dulski is talking about LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), then she is hyping. This has been available for over 2 decades since Prof. Susan Dumais of Microsoft & others first patented it.
Of course there are different existing variants of LSI and new ones always emerge from research literatures, of which they do vary in their accuracies, but if she has developed a better proprietary LSI , then that’s good for her service.
I’d like to see Jen succeed, but I’ve never understood this company from the beginning. Why would a consumer actually go there?
I would use this. I’m always looking for something new to try. Additionally if something could be customized for me to fit my price range even better. Hope practice = theory.
i think they need a namelift. like the sites functionality.
LocalDepot.com – near you
yeah, but will they beat out google? sounds like a good idea, but i don’t know…
As much as I’d like to cheer on a fellow Yahoo alumni (Hi Jen & Chandu, thanks for lunch).
Thing is…well, take a look at the home page. Go on. See that “thanksgiving” link from 2008?
Yes, I thought so…
…now, take a look at quantcast….they are quantified…then, ask yourself: why this & not yelp? Insiderpages? Craigslist or CitySearch?
Or…(gasp) judysbook?
Sorry guys, this isn’t it…and when your home page says “be a fan on facebook” and while facebook isn’t a local play, it has (seemingly, from what I’ve heard) as much local content…*and* the new myspace local actually rocks (did I say that?) and let’s not forget, Yahoo Local, or MSN Local…or AOL Local…
…well, just why would this spread? Or why would consumers end up here?
Is it the thanksgiving menu left to rot on the home page, or what? (sorry).
Perhaps the …well, third draft will work better…as the site said it was “first draft” before…or maybe they can trot out fatdoor again?
These guys have been roaming around and been copying sites and concepts. There is nothing original about them!
Wow – tough crowd leaving comments! As someone working on “local” (http://localtweeps.com, the local Twitter directory) I think the idea of semantic analysis is interesting. The opportunity really lies in helping people find relevant and credible content in an increasingly dynamic stream. A big piece of the picture is understanding who/where the content comes from, not just what it says (as Yelp has been reminded). At a certain point it comes down to relationships and trust. There’s only so much that “analysis” can do.
OMG I love it when TC posts “news” without even checking the website.
It took me 5 minutes to try “Center’d” out and decide that it’s really cr@p. Try clicking on “Boston” or “Seattle” and check out the recommendations about things to do. Boston without a visit to MIT or Harvard or the Charles River?
Seattle without mentioning the Space Needle?
The UI is really all over the place and using Arial (?) as a font is a strange design choice.
Other than that what’s with the Google adwords? I actually saw an ad to climbing Kilimanjaro when I was checking out San Francisco reviews. I hate websites that ruin the user experience by placing Google Adwords. Banners would probably work better.
Bottom line, this site is still sub-alpha, I’m surprised they’ve done any PR about it, I’d get contents first and then carefully test the waters.
Jason – do us all a favor and actually check the websites you’re writing about it before posting a “review”.