fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

So Mahalo, the self-declared “world’s first human-powered search engine” (um, seems that dinosaurs like us are being haunted by memories of some others in the distant, mythic past, Yahoo! and AskJeeves being two cases in point…) has launched – of sorts.

But while the name may mean “thank you” in Hawaiian, the general reaction seems to be one of “thanks, but no thanks”. So far it looks like it’s going to be one big exercise in underwhelming just about everyone in search.

Expectably, unkind reactions haven’t been slow in coming and I’ll bet a few terabytes’ worth in harddisk space anytime that tons more will follow soon.

While Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land is his usual calm and balanced self, reviewing it extensively and pointing out issues of scalability and human information gathering’s half time, Andy Hagans of Tropical SEO puts it very succintly in “Mahalo: Old Is New Again, But Bad Is Still Bad”: “My question is: why bother spamming it, when it won’t gain enough users to send any real traffic?”

More derision from Brian Provost at Scorebard Media: “Mahalo: That’s Hawaiian for 8 Visitors A Month” (title says it all).

And Aaron Wall on Threadwatch in “Lime, Rice, and Matt Cutts: Introducing Mahalo”:

• “About.com, without topical expert guides
• Del.icio.us, without popular votes
• Wikipedia, with paid editors and rarely updated guides
• only focused on popular crap”

Of course, Jason Calacanis, arguably the best hated man in search these days, was instrumental in rolling out this project, which may go to explain some of the knee jerk reactions we’re being treated to – though explain them all away it certainly won’t.

Because yes, Mahalo is crappy as hell at the moment, so much so it makes one wonder who’s supposed to have contributed the search engine tech side share of the required expertise. (They sure seem to have the PR and funding shtick covered ok.)

It’ll find anything except what you’re looking for, blasting you with an oh-so-funny “Oops! We haven’t hand-written a result page for ’search engine optimization’ yet!” message (or whatever the unlucky searcher happens to have been looking for) and a generous stack of Google AdSense plus G’s search results.

See screenshot:

Ok, so it’s a pot ugly design, too, IMV. As they also say in Hawaiian: `A`ohe launa! (”No fit!”)

However, let’s not forget that they’re still in alpha, ok? When was the last time you’ve seen just about anything in alpha that didn’t suck bigtime?

And: With such a top tier list of investors backing it, I wouldn’t want put it off too lightly either. While I’m fairly confident they’ll fail in the long run, it might actually be amusing to see them struggle – and, more importantly, watch the other big boys getting nervous, not because they’re a serious threat but because corporate America will always thrive on the fetish of excitation.

Hey, for all we know it might actually make the ominous Dotcom Bubble 2.0 finally validate itself by going pop across the board in one big screwed up avalanche after all. If this caliber of investing bodies loses out, five will give you twenty it’ll have plenty of repercussions.

On the other hand, maybe they’re really just pulling some noses in the Plex, targeting a buy out by Big Goo. Which, at this point in time, seems the most likely explanation of this futile venture. And it’s certainly something Google’s most ardent detractors would blithely wish upon them…

P.S.: And just while I was writing this, Peter Davanzo, fast and astute as always, voiced exactly the same suspicion: “This is an SEO play from Mr ‘SEO is Bullshit’. Amusing. The exit strategy is possibly even being bought by Google itself.”

Hard to disagree.

Subscribe Feed!