The new gloofi is arounf the corner

Hello all,

After some hard 4 weeks, the new gloofi is just around the corner. The new search engine goes a different route than Google and co since it is not about showing how many items were found, but how good are the items on the first page and that is why the gloofi result has never more than 5 entries. Every user now can go to gloofi and create/edit results by creating new ones. With those new results, users can vote for and make them more visible and the owner of the result will get money from the advertisement placed on her/his result.

The site follows the rule of simplicity. Just one site mainly, the search result. All can be done right there, creating an account, editing a result, adding advertisements…not many pages or a hard way to understand how this works.

Take control again of search and show the big guys that it is youo, the user who is in control.

Best

It has been a while!

Hello everybody,

It has been a while since my last entry here but because much is going on in the search arena I thought it is time to make a do over for gloofi. The overall performance of gloofi has been bad, despite all the cool functions it offers and so I decided to make radical changes. Just today I saw on Techcrunch that Wikia Search is shutting down and so I figured it is a good time to start over.

Many big names had a horrible performance in the search field, like wikia search, cuil and others. Also the big players like Yahoo and Live search are still falling behind on Google and thus sets the question, “Is there a way to compete against Google?”. Given, they have a great, easy to use product and all the money in teh world, but I am sure that it does not take that much to become noticed. I do not want to say “become a Google killer” since that seems to be impossible but I am convinced that search can be better as I have problems every day finding the stuff I am looking for.

My new idea is “make it simple” and pay back users that are involved to create a better search. All the fancy functions will be deleted from gloofi as it has proven time over time again, that the simpler is the better (Google, Twitter…). It will be hard for me since I added so many useful features but what good do they do if nobody is using them.

Come back soon for the BETA version of gloofi.

I am at TechCrunch 50….Who hooo;-)

Hello all,

our move to the Silicon Valley is already starting to pay off. I applied to the www.techcrunch50.com conference as a volunteer since the conference has become bigger and bigger and so they need more help. I got the invite to help during the conference which is not only a great honor to me but also an unprecedented opportunity to meet people in the right place.

A new feature in gloofi allows you to create your own search result including a simple URL to make it easy to share. The URL for the gloofi TechCrunch 50 search result is
 http://www.gloofi.com/s/Techcrunch_50.htm

Be sure to check it out and create your own results so your sites are found and not only the ones were the algorithm has the best match.

See you at TechCrunch 50.

Best,

Martin

TechCrunch visit on Friday, May 30

Hello all,

you might have heard from my visit at the TechCrunch Headquarters on May 30, if not, here is the information about the visit.

As everybody knows, TechCrunch is the biggest blog about Start-Ups in the US and world wide. I know that Michael Arrington, owner of TechCrunch, has the power to crush or help any company with his post on techcrunch.com. His audience are hundreds of thousands of users a day from all over the world, getting insides on hot new Start Ups.

So, here I was, all sweating and nervous, standing in front of the TechCrunch door and knocking. I just wanted to talk about gloofi for a couple of minutes to get his view and comments. Heather opened the door and there were about 6 other people visiting but I had some German Beer, Red Bull and a treat for his dog and so I got in and talked to Michael. Before I actually had a chance to do so, Loren, from 1938media “Interviewed” me and got me on the wrong foot. I did not expect something like this, but hey, I took the risk and all my heart and went through with it.
Find the Interview video here.

When talking to Michael, who also made a video, it was actually very interesting. He asked many questions and had some suggestions. I must admit that even though he is more or less accusing me of ”breaking in” (I didn’t), he was kind enough to take about 20 minutes of his time to talk to me. Thanks for that.
He said during my visit that he might not write anything about gloofi as it is not there yet and so I was even more shocked when I saw the post on TechCrunch on Monday morning.

Over all, the visit was a great success. I got thousands of hits on the site, but most importantly, I got feedback from users and that is what I need.

So, if you have any feedback, please let me know.

PS: The next time I visit TechCrunch I will make an appointment and be better prepared;-)

Best,

Martin

gloofi needs testers!

Hello all,

since gloofi is now available to everybody I am asking to get some users to test the functionality.

gloofi is an all new Search Engine trying to break out of the ordinary by adding Social Network functions and providing the user with Tools to manage the Index. A Reward Point System will help to keep the users and enable a never before seen quality ranking.

For more Information on gloofi, visit the main Blog at gloofi.wordpress.com or go to gloofi and check out the Videos @ http://www.gloofi.com/videos.php

Since I am only one person building this site, I need help with testers to find the flaws still in the system.

Thanks,

Martin

gloofi….share, approve, reward. Get involved!

Hello all,

this little Post should tell you about the 3 steps on how to make the most out of gloofi.

First: SHARE
Share means to share your sites or any other site you like and add them to the gloofi Index. Your Personal sites are easy to add and always available in your account.

Finally, your sites will be found since they are automatically linked together so when one of your private sites is found, all your other sites are available in the same search result in the Preview window for the found item.

You can also add any other item/site you like by selecting “Add Item” on the gloofi front page.

In addition to the standard information for each item, such as; Categories, Type, Name, Description and Tags, you can also add a physical Address, Search Phrases, Link the site to other pages and select how often the site should be crawled.

Second: APPROVE
There are 2 ways to approve items. 1st is using the standard approval process which shows one random page after another to be approved and 2nd is the all new “Direct Approval” service directly in the Search Result. Since gloofi has over 6 Billion pages Indexed, it will always show a result however, the users are wanted to distinguish between useful and useless sites so that only useful sites come into the Premier Index.

NOTE:
Trying to miss use the approval process will result in excluding all approved sites, loss of all Reward Points and cancellation of gloofi Account!

See the next Screenshot on how the “Direct Approval” looks like:

Third: REWARD POINTS
The most important piece in gloofi is the Reward Point System. This System will ensure that only users with sufficient Points are able to approve sites and thus set the quality high. In addition, the Reward Points will become Shares in gloofi or might become Cash once gloofi is profitable. This will create a higher loyalty and enables users to be part of what they create. Since the Reward Points are a measurement for each user, they are also used to calculate page rankings depending on the user activity on gloofi making sure that not registered users or users with less Points do not “mess up” the Index.

Please Note that gloofi has been built entirely by one person and that I do not have anybody to help or to test. I ask you to go to gloofi and play with it. Check out all the Videos to see what gloofi can do since you have never seen so many functions in a Search Engine;-)

Please let me know what you think.

Best,

Martin

gloofi update and information Video

Hello all,

it has been very busy lately since many errors needed to be fixed on gloofi since the day it opened to the public as Alpha 1.1 and now to Alpha 1.2. Also new functions like “Direct Approval” and better language search capabilities have been added.

This Post is to give you a heads up on what gloofi is and how to use it to make it better in the future.

gloofi is a new Search Engine giving all the power to the user (Forgive me, I didn’t find a better term). Users can share their sites by adding them to gloofi as well as adding any other page of interest. Sites than get approved by gloofi stuff or other users. Once the sites are approved, they are in the premier Index and will always show up before non approved items. The best thing is that for all your effort you get Reward Points. Watch this little Video to get some insight information:

All the best,

Martin

gloofi is LIVE!

Hello all,

I am proud to announce that gloofi is finally live. It can be used as any other search engine as it has an internal and external Index of more than 6 Billion pages!!!

In order to still have the users wanted to add pages and get Reward Points, all the external added pages are not approved from the start. They can be searched and used but not as much as pages that are approved by users. Many emails will go out the weekend of the 22nd – 23rd of March and some hundred press releases the week later to many known News Sites and Newspapers in the world.

Please, still remember. This is a one man job with NO investment but a serious business plan to make money from day one. With thousands of advertisements and connections to ebay and Amazon, being profitable should be possible in the first month!!! I think it is very important to have a business plan or business case to make sure you can survive and grow without investment. As Michael Arrington from TechCrunch said in his Blog: Think twice before accepting investment money.

So, go on there and add content, approve content and get your friends to be in groups to create the searches you like and not the ones the search engine is providing. Manage your Index entries and make sure you have all the information needed in the entry so users will see your entry first.

Thanks,

Martin

Index will be loaded by March 20th!

Hello all,

Finally. gloofi is on new servers and the Index will be loaded by March 20th.
All this is very exciting and I hope that all of you like the new service gloofi will provide. New functions, like “Direct Match” powered by Semantic Technologies and customizable entries in the Index and Result will be available soon. The Index will allow to search in Billions of pages, although not all pages are approved yet, gloofi users can do so to create the best Index there is.

The Reward Point system will allow to get only high quality items into the index as only approved items are able to make it into the gloofi index. In conjunction, only users with enough Reward Points are able to approve new sites, thus improving the quality even further. Also, the Reward Point system allows to get a better knowledge about which item is more valuable for users since each email sent, each Bookmark created or each Comment written will be tied to the quality ranking of each user (The more Reward Points, the higher the quality ranking!).

About 100,000 advertisements will be loaded at start ramping to 1 Million in about 1 month time. eBay and Amazon items will also be available as advertisements on gloofi enabling gloofi to have more advertisements on the site than any other site in the world (This is a bold statement…but hey;-)))!

I am very excited to get gloofi out and let the users use it. Always remember, this is only a one man job, no Million Dollar investment or a bunch of people working on it, just one person doing this during free time.

Best,

Martin

New features in gloofi and move to new servers

Hello all,

after being back in the office, I do finalize the work on the current gloofi version. There is a new cool feature that allows you to search easily within a domain. In the preview window, you can see a small search box that provides the option to search for anything on the given domain.

After some successful days and many signed accounts with merchants and affiliate networks, it is possible to have millions of advertisements just soon after moving to new servers. The move will happen in the next 5 – 7 days since the old server is running out of space. Also, the new connection to Amazon Web Services allows us to get billions of pages without using our crawler to run around to much to find new sites. That will enable us to grow faster without investing in to much hardware.

Also, here is a new video I put up on the site. It was not as easy as I thought to make a video of myself, but you have to start anyway;-)

Hope you enjoy it!

Best,

Martin