You may or may not know web mogul and conversational media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis but it's safe to say that he "got it" when weblogs were just starting to become hip.  Along the way, the properties he built (Engadget, Joystiq etc) were picked by companies like AOL for just a little bit of coin.  Though not breaking news, it's safe to say his latest start-up is gaining traction and proving relevance. Calacanis' latest vision is called Mahalo and he's taking on traditional search engines giants like Google and Yahoo but with Wikipedia-like capabilities and couple of strategic twists.  Sounds interesting, but what does that mean, right?  If you still can't quite get your head around it, here's a quote from the site's FAQ...

"Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links."

Mahalo, which is Hawaiian for "Thank you" conveys a sincere, heart-felt extension of gratitude.  Though the cost of assembling search results and content manually is certainly much higher, versus brute-force algorithmic approaches, Calacanis is betting that you'll thank his company for the high quality results you'll receive when you really need solid information on something important.  Try it and you be the judge.  Aloha... We've always liked that Maui vibe anyway. 

That's a really good idea. I'm definitely going to check that out.

I also think that sounds pretty good, at least you'll be getting user ranked search results :D

Now let's see how they'll manage BIAS.. You know some people "digging up" their websites and "digging down" competition??

Oh well...

Good luck taking down the Google empire. 

Crisis Causer:

Good luck taking down the Google empire. 

id say he has the chance to take down google, that is if google just sits still. this is a great idea though and hopefully google will do something similiar. i still remember when google was young :-)

I don't think you'd necessarily put Mahalo in direct competition with Google, at least not out of the gate. They're more augmentative than competitive. However down the line it's possible. Then again, if it gets big enough Google could just buy them; which might be part of the plan? Or not...

I can't see them competing with directly with Google (Not even YHOO and MSFT can do that apparently). As far as I'm concerned, what Digg is to news, Mahalo is to search. In any event I read that Google has suggested at creating another branch of search which incorporates human search as well as it's spider bot algorithm page rank voodoo. Another Web 2.0 Hawaiin word. Soon Hawaiin will be the official language of the Internet.

-Dev

Mahalo isn't Google by any means but its a quick way to get info that might take a few searches to get with Google, Yahoo, Live or my favorite Clusty.

 

And the how to section on Mahalo is a great place to send your friends who can't figure out how to do certain things and you don't want to bother to show them.

 

BTW: Mahalo Daily is pretty cool.

Mahalo Dave......for opening my eyes to this.

Went through the FAQ and liked what I saw.  Initial reaction is the same as everyone else as far as google goes but its kinda like apples n oranges at this point don't you think?

I am sure Wikipedia is not trying to put Encyclopeida Britanica out of business just as Mahalo isn't going to do to Google (at least not yet)

 Yes Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo is somewhat of a web 2.0 genius. he sold Weblogs, Inc. to AOL while the company was hot and made a fortune. i doubt AOL could afford to buy anything right now.