Regardless of who is responsible for the incredible hype that surrounded Wikia Search, the search engine that has been anticipated for over a year was welcomed with frowns and disappointment.
Wikia Search is another pet project taken on by Jimmy Wales and company, who are responsible for launching the hugely successful Wikipedia. Wales intended to take the human collaboration aspect of Wikipedia and create a search engine based upon human, not computer-based discernment. The announcement of the project was greeted with much excitement, but its alpha release on Monday left much to be desired.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch said that Wikia Search “may be one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing.” He referred to the “Jimmy Wales hype machine” as a culprit for inflating the hype surrounding the search engine.
The comments for that post drew Mr. Wales himself, who defended the nascent product by saying, “the comparison to Google on day one is just mistaken. Google didn’t launch a project to build a human-powered search engine, they launched an algorithmic search engine with a clever new idea. So they didn’t have to wait for the humans to come in and start building it.”
“We aren’t even running with a real index yet, just a placeholder index. Yeah, the search sucks today. But that’s not the point. The point is that we are building something different.”
Wales added that he should not be blamed for being the one who hyped Wikia Search as a “Google Killer,” though Arrington did refer to an earlier quote from Wales about his displeasure with Google’s results.
Wales ended his relatively civil comment-based discussion with Arrington by saying, “It’s a dramatic review, but an honest review. The search results are just being pulled from a placeholder index, so they suck. The social tools are being rolled out as we finish them. It’ll shape up, and hopefully eventually it won’t suck.”
He was also quoted in the New York Times as saying, “We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer.”
Arrington was far from alone in his disappointment. Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence said that “Wikia Search doesn't deliver against the hype.” He also discussed the social networking aspect of the search engine, saying “it has the look and feel of a conventional search engine, but it's not significantly different from existing search or social networks to make much of a dent in anybody's market share.”
Wales firmly believes that the human collaboration and open source foundations that his search engine is based upon will eventually yield a search engine that surpass the current big five: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask.com.
Clearly, a project that relies so heavily upon human contributions (which is a feature that is not yet fully available on the alpha version of the search engine) will require some time to gain momentum, quality, and differentiation. The big beef that many seem to have is that the first unveiling of what many expected to be a contender for the crown of “King of Search” was nothing more than a huge letdown. Where many expected to see a lion when the curtain was dropped, they instead saw a wet, dirty dog.
There seems to be a lot to clean up for Wikia Search. The social networking features seem superfluous and formulaic, and the search results pages offer absolutely nothing special and will not draw anyone away from Google, let alone any of the other major search engines.
Still, final judgment of Wikia Search should be held back until a later date, after the human collaboration aspect of the search engine is in fuller effect. Wales and his crew should just hope that this tremendous buzz kill does not prevent today’s visitors from visiting again and contributing in the future.
Sources:
http://alpha.search.wikia.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/06/
wikia-search-is-a-complete-letdown/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/technology/
07wiki.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=01300170F2AO
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/07/
Wikia-search-engine-to-go-live_1.html
Jason Hahn
e: jhahn221@gmail.com
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