Mahalo Social Search: Humans AND Machines Miss User Links Boat
Just six months out of the Mahalo gate, Jason Calacanis already is claiming many milestones, today making the blogosphere rounds to tout his $20 million VC backed venture is the “first search engine to add a social layer.”
Following Calacanis’ personal telephone social demos, the accolades are flowing, Dean Takahashi headlines “Mahalo takes a step forward,” citing the Calacanis’ belief that “humans can outwit the machines.”
While the Mahalo press release, Mahalo How-Tos, Calacanis demos and blog stories hail the power of human “curation” over anonymous algorithms, Mahalo Social, itself, is not very socialable for the 1.8 million uniques Calacanis claims.
In discussing the new Mahalo feature with Calacanis’ last week, I underscored the increasing difficulty in getting users to participate and contribute, as virtually every Web site wants to offer similar “social layers” and to also spur user generated angles. Calacanis concurs but does not believe a heavy participation level is required to build a meaningful level of “user recommended links.”
What IS required for ANY level of user participation, however, is a clear and understandable user call to action, directly on each and every one of the Mahalo human-powered search pages. The Mahalo tag line is “we’re here to help,” but the new Mahalo “user recommended links” feature presents as a bit of a bait-and-switch.
The “User Recommended Links” section of Mahalo pages generally say: “None just yet, you could be the first to recommend a link for XXX.” PLUS: “Know a better link for XXX?”
Clicking on the Mahalo “Know a better link?” leads to a link submission box, which usually yields either an OOPs message and login demand, or an apparent accepted submission, but no apparent posting.
A more sociable way for Mahalo to encourage a social layer would be a more-direct call-for-action that is upfront about registration requirements. Human-powered, or machine-driven, standard usability best practices apply.
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