What Is Going On At Mahalo?

Posted by Michael Garrett on April 1st, 2008

Ever since the “human-powered search engine” Mahalo launched (and even in the months preceding launch), the startup has dealt with its share of skepticism from critics. Of course the founder, Jason Calacanis (formerly of Netscape/AOL and Weblogs Inc.), has dealt with his share of criticism before, but it seems as if progress on Mahalo is being closely monitored by the blogging community as if it is doomed to fail.

Just today, Allen Stern of Center Networks has posted about the latest updates to the ever-changing guidelines and purpose of Mahalo. What was originally deemed a human-generated search engine (similar to ChaCha) with no focus on SEO or inbound links from Google or Yahoo, the site is now being touted as a “research engine.” Instead of pages filled with relevant outbound links, Calacanis has now shifted the focus into providing more content and less links. Now that almost 75% of Mahalo traffic seems to be coming from Google, it is ironic that Calacanis has now delivered a message to all guides: “No guide notes, no google/yahoo rankings, and no traffic. No traffic, no money. No money, we all go home.”

“We thought 10% content and 90% links, now we think 50-60% content, 20-30% links (20-30% user contributions: reviews, images, videos, links, etc),” stated Calacanis in a comment on Stern's posting today.

This change will now mean that the paid guides (of which there are more than 3500) who create each listing on the site will essentially have to start writing more content and using fewer links to earn more money. As a former part-time guide in the Mahalo Greenhouse, having created more than 50 search engine result pages (SeRPs), I was never particularly fond of the original payment system, whereby the more SeRPs a guide created, the more each one was worth.  Considering how much time it took to find links, organize those on a page that adheres to the style guidelines (which have now been modified several times since), working as a part-time guide was feeling more like an underpaying full-time job.

Now, with content being the main focus, I can only imagine how much more time it would take to make a results page. It just seems to me like Calacanis is still developing (and modifying) Mahalo into a site that people actually want to visit while also being able to generate some profit. With the majority of guides probably unwilling to put in so much work for such menial pay, the source of new content will most likely shift from those who are being paid to the growing community of users providing relevant information for no compensation.

As far as when Mahalo may actually start generating some profit, Calacanis has said, “we'll get there in a year or so… right according to plan.” I just wonder if that plan took into account all of the changes that have been made in the last nine months or so.

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