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

Info: Is Google going down?

Hello all,

I just had the urgency to write this post since lately Google is somewhat struggling and I was wondering what happens next?

Well, I created a search engine, so I am not to much in favor of Google since it was Google that sucked so bad during a search that I just had to do it myself. I am not there yet and of course I am not a competitor to Google since I am just a one man show but when you look at Internet history, you can see that there are always changes and that those changes are radical.

Googles only income is still from AdWords only. There is no other source yet and, please, do not believe that mobile advertisement or M-Commerce will do the trick or do you really think you look on an ad while using the cell phone?!? Also, users will have forgotten about the ad in seconds since using the cell phone is usually when you are out and thus it will not stick. M-Commerce is another bull shit idea. Many years back Siemens said in Munich (I used to work for them) that M-Commerce is the next big thing. Well, I don’t think so or do you think on buying a book through your cell phone while standing in the book store?!?

So, to coming back to Google and looking at history, many big names went down hill again after being on top of their game. Look at Altavista, while it was the search engine at that time, nobody really knows them any more. Or, a much better example is AOL. Once the richest company in the world it is just a dust holder for Time Warner and worth nothing. Lately we can see Yahoo! having problems but once Yahoo! was worth more than Google is right now (3 Jan 2000) and, to be honest, I think that Yahoo! should still be worth more than Google. Why?

Well, Yahoo! has information, content, design and features, Google does have …..search and nothing really! All the other things Google has, Maps, Mail, Checkout, Blogger…. are not making any money and are not No1 in any community. Checkout is a disaster, Mail is horrible to use, Maps is actually very cool and I also have a Blogger account. There is much more but again, it is not making any money and even Google will have to face the fact that no company can give away stuff for free.

Now, if others come along in search and advertising with a better product, Google might in 3 – 4 years be in the same position as Yahoo! is right now. Why?

Because Google is arrogant and thinks they are the god of the Internet and Search and they do not have to change a bit about it…. well, I hope they don’t!

A comment at Techcrunch noted that Google will see it’s first layoffs in 2009. I totally agree.

Best,

Martin

Back from Vegas, new servers next week!

Hello all,

I am back from the Vegas Summit. I had a blast there by talking to many people and giving out business cards. People really liked the idea of gloofi as it combines Search, Social Networking, Affiliate Marketing, Wiki style editing and user friendly usage all in one package. One person even said “This can become bigger than Google!”. Well, I don’t want to go there but there is a huge potential as gloofi offers so many new things never before seen.

To recap, gloofi offers to let you ad and edit your Index entry. By adding many entries you will receive points for each approved entry which will lead to shares in gloofi or even cash once gloofi makes money. This will keep the users on the site to make it better day by day. Users can easily send links via email, bookmark links in social bookmarking sites or comment about an entry without leaving the result. All those activities in conjunction with each users points (used for ranking) will allow to create a much better site ranking than a link based ranking like Google.

Next week the site will move to bigger servers and will have some 100.000 pages indexed to make at least a result like Mahalo has from the beginning. I also was able to get contacts for many affiliate accounts so gloofi will than have over 1 Million adds to serve in about 2 – 3 weeks. The new ways for serving advertisements will also put Google in a bad position, since the standard Affiliate process of each merchant can be used and thus no cost is involved till an item has been bought on the merchant site. Once ebay and Amazon is included, gloofi will have about 6 times more advertisements than Google.

OK, that is it for now.

Best,

Martin

gloofi is LIVE;-)

Hello all,

gloofi is live!!!
Today I decided to bring the site online, even though there is no Index yet but since I will be at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, I need something to show.

The real Index and new Servers will be used by the end of February so please be patient as of right now with the limited ALPHA result and don’t judge the site because of low speed and no content. All this will be up soon but as this is a 1 man job, it is hard to get all things done in time;-)

I appreciate your comments and hope that gloofi will make a difference in search and advertising since it is the users that are responsible for their content and advertisement, enabling a relationship between the site and the content on gloofi.

Best,

Martin

Just days before going live!

Hello all,

 this is very exciting right now. After more than a year in development I am just days before bringing gloofi live. Many never before seen features will be available on this new search engine, hoping to elevate search and user interaction to new heights. The primary goal is to make many things easier for users and come to what users are looking for faster then ever.

Due to new advertisement options gloofi will have more advertisements than Google, thus generating profit from day 1 (If enough users are coming to gloofi;-))) for the gloofi users and community. Even blog owners can advertise their blogs effectively in gloofi for extremely low cost and the unique auto update feature allows that your advertisement for your blog will always have the latest text in the gloofi Index so you don’t have to fiddle around to update the advertisement on gloofi.

Also, check out this french blog about gloofi: http://www.usearch.be/engine/gloofi-version-alpha-publique-dans-quelques-jours/

Hope to see you all soon,

Martin

Could the Yahoo/Microsoft merger help other search engines?

Hello all,

just a week before going live with gloofi, everybody is talking about the Yahoo/Microsoft merger and the possible positive effects for Google.

Why positive effects for Google?

As we all know, many users do not like Microsoft and so they would move their advertisements away from Yahoo to Google or other ad networks. Google might get the most advertisements in the short term, but others might have a chance too to cash in on advertisements since not everybody is happy with the high fees paid to Google for good keywords.

Would the merger be good for smaller search engines?

I think it would since Yahoo/Microsoft might get a grip on getting a better percentage against Google in the long run. During that battle, smaller search engines might have the chance to get more users since the ones who don’t like Google might also not like Microsoft and so the smaller ones will come out.

We will see what the future will bring, but always look at the past, when Altavista was the No. 1 search engine, AOL the biggest Internet company and Yahoo the No. 1 stock. We all see that things can change fast and that is why I try to get into this market to change how we search and maybe things change to be positive and one day another small Start-Up search engine will have some percentage market share.

OK, see you all next week at www.gloofi.com.

Martin

February 2008 will be the Go Live month for gloofi

Hello all,

finally the day will come were gloofi is going live. In February 2008 gloofi will go live with many never before seen features in a search engine. Once the site is live, users will tell if the site makes sense or not. I guess and hope the site will be a great success as finally search is enhanced to a new level.

As you know, Wikia Search started just a couple of weeks back which I think is my biggest competitor. After some testing of Wikia Search, I must say it is not even close to gloofi. All that money they spend for nothing is a shame and the “Open Source” idea behind it fails as it is not important on how a program calculates a ranking or to see a “235342535634″ number but it is important that you get tools to improve your websites ranking and leave SEO out the door. gloofi offers YOU to be in control of your own content in the Index. By adding it to groups or other sites your site can be seen by others, BUT, be aware that only quality sites will make it into the system as each site is approved by qualified users.

So, check out www.gloofi.com soon, add as many sites as you want and get reward points that will end up in Shares or Cash. gloofi is the first website ever giving a percentage of it’s value back to it’s users because that will create the biggest community and everybody is willing to offer to work and keep it clean as only a good Search Index will be valuable giving you something back in return.

See you soon,

Martin

Why need Investors?

Hello all,

haven’t updated my blog in a while, just because there was so much going on.
As you know, I am building this search engine www.gloofi.com and so I was also looking for Investors.

Well, let me tell you, don’t waste your time on this when you have a good idea and can start without them!

In September 2007 I talked to 2 investors in Europe. Both know each other and work mainly together. I showed them gloofi and made a nice Business Plan with all the bells and whistles, financial projection and so on. They both liked it very much, so much in fact, that one investor asked me to do this without the other investor! The other investor said “This can be bigger than Google” but he needs a mathematics guru for 6 – 8 month to look into the code to see if the volume can be handled!!! What?!?

Of course, I didn’t here back from them any more and I don’t have time to bother.

Than I got a lead to a Washington based Venture Capital company. It took about 6 – 8 weeks to set up a phone conference including Web Meeting to show the solution. The investors liked the idea but as they have invested in another search engine with “Human Search” they didn’t see the wooow effect in gloofi just yet. Well, at least that was honest but the site they invested in is under a bad star, but we will see!

Than, a friend told me about this real estate investor which has no clue about Internet business but we arranged a meeting. He was all blown away and said “We will do this”. 2 hours later he talked to a banker and all was gone again…”To risky”!

After all, I think if you can do it on your own and if you are able to get the community behind it, you can start without investment. Just built the solution in your spare time and open it up for everybody to use. The time you waste with investors is often not worth it, only if you have enough money to travel and enough time to built nice, useless Business Plans with good numbers in them.

Get the site out and see if investors come to your door rather than spending time and money to get investors before hand, because if you are a developer, you should focus on your strong suit and not on something you fall short.

That is why I decided to bring gloofi.com online in the first week of February 2008, without investors!

Best,

Martin

gloofi is adding some more unique search functions!

Hello all,

sorry for not adding a blog lately but there was so much going on with gloofi that it was nearly impossible to do other work. Hundreds of Alpha user requests and many questions about gloofi arrived in my inbox over the last 2 month. Most or all of the questions and answers are very positive. Everybody likes the idea and is excited about what the possibilities of gloofi are.

And again, gloofi is adding some more functions to its current release before going live.

An all new search “Sticky Bar”!?!

Have you ever searched for something and found several sites that might be what you are looking for but you are still looking or still searching other possibilities and you do not want to Bookmark each one of them since you are not finished searching yet. The gloofi “Sticky Bar” allows you to add items from the result to a temporary Bar that opens up on the right of the result and shows all the “Sticky” items on there. After you have added as many as you like to the “Sticky Bar” you can go to them one by one and compare the items without leaving gloofi!

Please see a screenshot of that function how it looks in the Search Result:

And here how you can browse through the items by having the Sticky Bar next to the Web Page.

I will post more Info soon and hope to open the site in December;-)

Best,

Martin

Personalized Search result

Hello all,

today I want you to show the gloofi “Personalized Search Result” that shows only one Item at a time.

I know, this is totally against what others are doing, as they usually want to show more results with less information, but when you use the “Personalized Search Result”, you can make a much better decision if the Item you are seeing is really what you are looking for so you do not click on old, outdated or useless links.

So, how does this work?

First, you can save search settings that are used any time you use the “Personalized Search Result”, including Semantic Search, Human Search or according to your last searches. The result can be many pages but only one is displayed at a time.

By using the Keyboard “Up” and “Down” Keys you can navigate very easy and fast through the result. The text found is more specific and the information below the found text shows links to and from the page as well as what Category the Item is in, what Groups it belongs to and how many Votes and Comments it has. Furthermore, by hitting the space bar the Real Web Page of the found Item will be displayed below the result, so you can browse the result and see the found pages at the same time.

By clicking on the Icons below the result you can send the link via email, preview comments, write comments, or preview pictures, videos and maps.

gloofi has many ways displaying and changing the search result, so go to www.gloofi.comand get an ALPHA account and let me know what you like or don’t like about gloofi.