The big question is: Is Mahalo the next generation search engine? I’m starting to think the answer is yes. I’m already to the point of taking traffic from Wikipedia for granted. For any real search you can presume that there will be a wikipedia page in the top 10. The number one critique of Wikipedia is that eventually the editors that patrol the site will become bored, and since they are volunteers they get tired of doing work for no paycheck eventually.
So, my prediction: As the freetards get bored with wikipedia, the folks who would like to eat and have more extravagant luxuries such as health coverage will go over to Mahalo to get paid for doing the same quality of work. I think the fusion of Digg-type functionality with the distrubuted content generation of Wikipedia is a winning combination.
One reply on “Mahalo – Is it just crazy enough to work?”
I would tend to agree. Additionally, with Jason Calacanis rapidly becoming as sought after a speaker/expert within the media community, he is rapidly catching up to Jimmy Wales in terms of notoriety.
The other benefit Mahalo has is that their page template allows for information to be gathered and diseeminated much faster. By using links to information instead of creating full length articles Mahalo has an advantage on the scalability front.