Mahalo Faces Vertical Human Search Attack: OrganizedWisdom Health
Jason Calacanis may believe he can dictate the entire future of Web 3.0 in his own Mahalo vision for the Internet to acquiesce to. Steven Krein, however, believes that Calacanis’ Mahalo now is officially vulnerable vertically, thanks to Krein’s OrganizedWisdom.
The OrganizedWisdom.com homepage is “inspired” by Google. Its touted WisdomCard “hand-edited, spam-free search results pages” look as if “inspired” by Mahalo, the self-described “human-powered search engine.”
Mahalao and OrganizedWisom also share Web 1.0 roots: Both are the products of entrepreneurs who made their Internet marks the first Web go around. Mahalo is a Calacanis production, OrganizedWisdom is led by Krein, the man behind Promotions.com in 1996.
Krein demoed his new OrganizedWisdom last evening at the NY Tech Meetup. While Calacanis is aiming to recruit humans to “write result pages” for “the top 20,000 search terms,” Krein has set a goal of driving the “curation” of 10,000 health focused WisdomCards over the next 12 months; At launch the service includes pages on “more than 100 of the most popular health topics.”
I asked Krein how he compensates OrganizedWisdom “guides” and keeps the “Cards” up to date: 1) $10-$15 per WisdomCard developed and 2) Staff editors monitor developed pages.
OrganizedWisdom obviously can not diss the Mahalo model, as they emulate it. Krein CAN claim superiority in his own health vertical, however, as he does loud and proud. For one big thing, there is an MD on board, Howard Krein, Chief Medical Officer. According to Dr. Krein:
No other search engine has physicians guiding every search result. Each and every WisdomCard is reviewed by at least one physician.
A search for “necrotizing fasciitis” (aka flesh eating bacteria) on the two sites backs up OrganizedWisdom’s we trump Mahalo health search queries claim.
While Mahalo has not written a result page for flesh eating bacteria “yet,” OrganizedWisdom has organized top picks for “necrotizing fasciitis.”
Currently financed by founders and management, Krein said OrganizedWisodom will soon close a Series A round of venture funding.
Krein has not claimed to drive Web 3.0, as competitor Calacanis does, BUT he has made an OrganizedWisdom claim to own the health vertical in the human search battle, at the expense of Mahalao (be it Web version 1, 2 or 3!).
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