Comments on: Stan the Man Roils Search Fabric

By: sperky undernet

sperky undernet — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:19:09 +0000

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
- Henry Kissinger

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:37:35 +0000

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
– Albert Einstein

By: Stephen E. Arnold

Stephen E. Arnold — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:21:43 +0000

Sperky Undernet,

Right on. I want vendors to be clear. Simple is not clear.

Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:36:47 +0000

Interesting imagery. In case it’s still not clear, I wrote my post before there was any indication on the Meet Stan site that it was associated with Vivisimo. It’s clear now. It wasn’t then. Gory details on my blog and Vivisimo’s.

As for Endeca demos on the web, there are lots of Endeca-powered sites that are public-facing and free for consumers, including Home Depot, the Nike store, ESPN, WebMD, and the Financial Times’s recently launched Newssift site. We aren’t trying to be a web search engine (or meta-search engine). We had a demo site back in 2001, but we’ve focused on customers ever since.

(apologies if this comment is a duplicate–I submitted it before with links, and I suspect it triggered a spam filter)

By: sperky undernet

sperky undernet — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:18:28 +0000

The Vivisimo footer on the bottom of the meetstan site makes this different from an apparently independent blogger site with an agenda. The possible association of “Meet Stan” with the veteran product “AskSam” is ingenious from a marketing point of view. Marketing is the pornography of product in a system that seems to epitomize the art painting of the mother that eats her own offspring that for some reason I cannot seem to find reference to on the net. The bottom line for this user is that Vivisimo makes evident the potential of clustering with its Clusty and ClusterMed products. Does Endeca have offerings on the free web or free user trial front?

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:26:33 +0000

Since I’m the cited example, I’ll identify myself as the blogger who flamed Stan. Vivisimo VP of Marketing Rebecca Thompson is a decent human being, and I think the “Meet Stan” pre-launch campaign was a honest mistake, either on her part or on the part of someone working for her. She probably thinks I overreacted. Regardless, she quickly cleared up any confusion (possibly including your own), and we moved on.

But I’m curious that you say “don’t think marketing is the problem.” and then follow up with “The buyers listen to the pitches and don’t have much of an idea about the dependencies that make the different between a search system that works and one that does not.” If buyers don’t understand what makes a search system work, then, at least in my view, marketing is part of the problem.