The Gong Show

I have been reading the coverage of Mahalo, Jason Calacanis’s latest project, with much interest. One startup I really like is Top 10 Sources, and Mahalo has a lot of the elements that Top 10 Sources gets right (domain experts curating links), plus some cool user generated tools too to suppliment the curators.

In general, I am optimistic about curated web experiences, especially if the curator is (at least in part) powered or audited by the crowd. A Google search results page requires lots of past searches to be really effective and efficient. For example, a search for almost any coding question will generate a search result for a page at the “experts-exchange” domain. Experienced Google searchers know not to click on the “experts-exchange” links because they’re all garbage that requires registration in order to see answers to your question. Yet, how could a novice know to avoid these links? “Experts-exchange” is SEO’d extremely well, so it’s a tough nut for Google to crack, but curation fixes this problem via human filter.

Curation makes a lot of sense for broad, common subjects and searches. I’m curious how the Mahalo approach to curation will hold up further out on the long tail, and I look forward to playing with it in the coming weeks.