Human powered search is back

You use the ultimate in technology - the human brain. In the bid to beat Google, new search engine Mahalo is aiming to hand-write the web.

Each search result page on Mahalo is a combination of hand-picked websites about the subject, along with a few 'fast facts' and links to authorities such as Wikipedia and IMDB. Currently, the site indexes the top 4000 search results on Google, and aims to hand-write 10,000 by the end of the year.

This is the brainchild of Jason Calacanis, the man responsible for Engadget and the Weblogs Inc network, and formerly the proprieter of the bubble-age Silicon Alley reporter. The website, codenamed 'Project X' by the famously bombastic Calacanis, was incubated in a pool house in his back garden with a small team of techs and a large amount of money spent at the Apple Store.

Mahalo currently employs 40 full-time editors based in LA, and that number will grow before the year is out. Paying people to work on these kinds of projects is something of a novel idea, since both Wikipedia and Digg expect users to do the compiling work for the kudos of it, rather than any actual dime. Coming from a publishing background, Calacanis is clearly a fan of paid editorial work, although users can submit new links for inclusion on results pages and these can be voted on by the public, although approval rests finally with the editor of the page.

The site really appears to be an unholy mashup of Google, Digg, Wikipedia and About. But can it really become a search destination when Google is so ubiquitous? "When we have the results [to a query], it's going to be 10 times better than Google or Yahoo," Calacanis told execs at the D Conference this week. "Every innovation that Google comes up with becomes another tool for us to move up the stack," Calacanis said. "We are standing on the shoulders of giants." The theory is that Google is the partner, not the competition, and that so-called 'long tail' results will always be machine generated.

The project has certainly attracted interest, with many comparing it to the original 'Yahoo Directory' back when the web was much smaller and hand-picked recommendations were the gateway to many sites.

Can it attract Google-esque success? The future is, as the magic 8-ball reveals, unclear. But as Calacanis says on his blog - "Alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha." µ