Blekko: More Dough, Same Splash Page
June 5, 2008
In a phone call today, a 20-something complained about my failure to write about Blekko. I said I would check my files. There’s not much information about this new search engine. The few facts in my files peg the company to Rich Skrenta. He was involved in a news site called Topix.net that I used a couple of years ago and then dropped from my “A” list. (More about this above my signature block.)
His new company attracted some Silicon Valley incredible hulks with money; for example, Marc Andreessen (Netscape, Ning, and several other high profile ventures).
The major news, which I overlooked until today, is that the company has raised about $3 million. Among the backers are Baseline Ventures and some ex-Googlers (a better term is Xoogler, which some Googlers prefer). This information came from the very useful Web log PaidContent.org here. TechCrunch does it usual very good job of providing the basics with some intriguing color here.
The Blekko Web site here features a modest amount of information. There’s a link for the press and one for jobs. Oh, the Web site has a snapshot that puts my data bunny to shame. My hunch is that the whimsical will annoy certain tight collar MBAs, but I like the picture.
This is either a “blekko” or a very interesting programmer from MIT or CalTech.
I haven’t been given a demo. I did hear that the company will be using “advanced algorithms” and “semantic technology”. I’m not sure what this means exactly, but I have added Blekko.com to my watch list.
Now why did I abandon Topix.net? There were three reasons:
- I found the results diluted with hits from sources that weren’t very good. The same story endlessly recycled without the Techmeme.com or Google News-style display of related links annoyed me.
- The time functionality was useless. Each item displays a date and time, yet a query would return hits to documents I had seen months before. Sorting by time is a core function, and Topix.net seemed close to making this need a reality. Wrong.
- The system has problems with bound phrases that contain unusual characters. There are some pretty wacky company and product names out in the wild. The search system had difficulty with these strings even when I put them in quotes.
What’s this mean for Blekko? First, I’m going to see if my complaints about Topix.net’s search function have been addressed. Second, I need to see a newcomer do some serious content processing. I’m tired of fiddling with Wikipedia content. I loath the Enron email demos. With billions of Web pages begging to be indexed, I want to see Blekko rip off a chunk of six or eight billion and let me explore that corpus.
I will let you know when I have more information.
Stephen Arnold, June 5, 2008
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