Human-flesh Search Engines in China
Human-flesh search engines - renrou sousuo yinqing - have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online with offline results.
What have you been up to, Jake?
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I build a generalized platform for these buttons and called it Kwisi, short for “Know When I See It”, and started testing on some friends’ sites (like the Photojojo Store). The name referred to the idea that sometimes you don’t know exactly what you want — you just have to look around and see what catches your eye. When you do a Google Search, for example, you have some word in mind, and you’re attempting to go directly to it. But what if you’re just in the mood to shop? What if you want to see something new, something innovative, or strange, or obscure, or foreign? Traditional web search isn’t that helpful. So I thought I would install this platform on other sites, who would change their whole webstore around to accommodate me.
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My philosophy here is that search engines are 20-year-old technology and we need new ways of navigating the endless data that is piling up every day. To that end, I have committed to Hybrowse as a four-month project. I will continue working full-time on it until May 1st (at the very least). This is not a startup company, it is my attempt to make life more manageable for anyone who feels overwhelmed with data. If you feel that is a noble goal then please play with the site and let me know how I can improve it. Very few things are “locked in” and it’s very easy to make changes, so if you have any opinions, please send them to me at jake@hybrowse.com. I want to know your thoughts; it’s hard for me to see the site very clearly anymore, by myself.
But before I go, I will make this more interesting and supply some new ammunition for anyone who thinks I am crazy. The crazy thing is this. By May 1st I will have 1,000 services on Hybrowse. Yes, that’s 998 more than I have right now (Netflix and Etsy). I consider this goal “impossible” and will, by any rational calculation, fail hilariously, but I don’t care — I need an audacious goal that gets my adrenaline pumping, and 100 doesn’t do it. 1000 sites. I’m like a local car salesman on tv. “THESE GOALS ARE INSANE!!!”
I genuinely think the site would be profoundly useful if it had 1,000 services. Picture it. You land on the home page and use the same “overlapping tags” mechanism to discover, say, Swedish housewares stores, then pick one, then browse their overpriced euroshit. Or you sort through Match.com profiles and try to find ones that don’t look like monsters. I don’t know how it will work. But I’m going to do it and I want your suggestions … and this is going to be a very busy couple months and I have to go now, because I suddenly realized I have a lot of effing work to do.
jake@hybrowse.com
(ps: Peter Vidani did the site’s visual design)
this is great, jake. i really hope you reach your goal b/c the approach is absolutely necessary. 1,000 is a smart number too.
We’re very excited to be able to bring together the complementary strengths of Google and Lala. Google is focused on improving search and getting users to what they are looking for as fast as possible. Lala is dedicated to providing the best possible experience around music discovery, listening, and purchasing. Together, we’ve enabled a music search that is unrivaled on the web. Check it out on Google as they bring music search to most US users over the next couple of days.
We’re also excited to announce that the new Facebook Gift Shop that was announced last week is nearing full rollout, and is now available to the vast majority of U.S. users. Lala is powering the “Music and MP3s” section at the top of the Gift Shop, enabling you to now purchase web songs and MP3s as gifts for your Facebook friends without ever leaving Facebook!
so, i’m not going to lie, i’m late to lala. a former colleague, blake, sent me an invite eons ago and i sat on it. i didn’t see the value at the time. i was able to stream sirius on my laptop in the office and music-wise, i was generally satiated.
after sirius did some general bed-shitting all around (web player sucks, cut-off access to 3rd party streaming apps and their iphone app sucks), i was stuck using pandora. pandora gets old, after a while. so, i dug up the lala invite and went to town.
the concept of being able to upload my entire music library and having it accessible through a browser whenever i want it is great. also, the “add song” enabling one to listen on the web but never have to download or buy the song? genius. i’ve sort of converted to “music in the cloud.”
so - enough background. my point is, do you see iTunes or Amazon doing this? i can’t send someone music through facebook with those services. i can’t use google to search itunes.
i realize their market share, user base, etc. is eons beyond but people are starting to move past the idea of owning physical content. or needing to download physical content and towards it being accessible the way we want and need it without worrying about external hard drives for the rest of our lives. on-demand, essentially.
utopian? maybe. the future? certainly.
pile:
Sponsored links rendering search useless
GOOG not thinking about intrinsic value. sometimes, you can make more money by staying away from the lowest common denominator. i’d much rather see strong applications of the maps software that uses verefied, accurate, non-cluttered info (and maybe pay for it) then seeing this crap.
Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. Changes in the search volume of a given sector on google.com may provide unique economic insight.
this is interesting to me.
