Unquiet Desperation

Mahalo, the human-powered search engine, has launched two new features that can aid in saving you some time while cruising the Web.


First up is version 3.0 of their FollowMe feature. Now when you want to recommend a page you come across, you can submit to Del.icio.us, Magnolia, Mahalo Social, and Twitter all from the same screen. It will save you a couple steps, and if you don’t want to submit it to any given service, you can uncheck any of the boxes. It will also added a guide to helpful shortcuts when you are on popular sites such as Gmail and Twitter to save you the effort of looking it up.

For the second feature, Mahalo is taking a page from Wikipedia’s book and adding “stubs”. This is an attempt to get more users involved with the process of building the search results so that the search engine can grow more quickly. If any stub receives more than three quality links, the Mahalo guides will then get involved, and help finish building the page out. And to combat spam, which could certainly become a problem with such an infrastructure, the company has a team of 50 employees monitoring all incoming links. Those found submitting spam can face suspension of their entire account, so think twice before you have a go at it.

Mahalo Launches New Toolbar And User Stubs

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Tags: mahalo

[](http://www.mahalo.com)

This is the project I’ve been working on for the last few months, which I have not been able to talk about until now. The Big Secret is now out, and we are live. Say hello to [Mahalo](http://www.mahalo.com).

From the [press prelease](http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_PR):
>**Human-powered search engine Mahalo.com launches with investors including Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk, Newscorp, CBS and Burda Media.**
>
>Wall Street Journal’s D Conference (Northern San Diego), May 30th, 2007: Serial entrepreneur Jason McCabe Calacanis today launched Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine, at the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference. The site is currently being launched in Alpha with the Internet’s 4,000 most popular search terms completed. The Santa Monica-based company hopes to reach 10,000 search terms by the end of the year. At that point it will enter Beta, and launch shortly thereafter.
>
>”We’re in month five of a five-year project,” explained Calacanis, “but we wanted to get some real-world feedback, so we’re launching it early here at D Conference.”
>
>The site is focused on the top English-language search terms, including verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. “Google’s mission is to index the world’s information; our mission is to curate that wonderful index,” said Calacanis. “It’s my belief that humans can play a significant role in the development of search results and we’re going to try to figure out exactly what that role is over the next couple of years. I am really looking forward to hearing what people think of the Alpha,” he added.
>
>..Additionally, the firm announced that it has closed two rounds of financing to date. Lead investors include Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk and NewsCorp. Additional investors include CBS, Hubert Burda Media, Allen & Co., David Bradley, Gigi Brisson, Sandy Climan, Mark Cuban, Matt Coffin, Ted Leonsis, Jonathan Miller, Mark Pincus, Ryan Scott, and Fred Wilson.

Check out the following links for some more information:

1. [Mahalo FAQ](http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_FAQ)
2. [Mahalo Blog](http://blog.mahalo.com)
3. [Techcrunch Coverage](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/jason-calacanis-launches-mahalo-today-human-powered-search/)
4. [D Conference Coverage](http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/mahalo-search/)
5. [FOX News](http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007May30/0,4670,HumanSearch,00.html)
6. [Wall Street Journal](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118056234795419124.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)