Two weeks ago, we covered the launch of Mahalo, the first search engine with a human touch. Now, 15 days into the alpha-testing of this human-powered search, Jason Calcanis announced, in his blog, the launch of Mahalo Greenhouse, “a place where the public can build search results that — if accepted by our Guides — will be included in the Mahalo search index.”
A lot of people all over the web have given their 2 cents on the launch of this human-powered search, most of which revolved around the scalability of the project, the system being dependent on human preferences, as well as the bulk of work to be done to achieve its goals. Putting the feedbacks into consideration, Calcanis’ team is launching the Mahalo Greenhouse as a way of involving anyone who’s interested to help, just as he said, “The tag line of Mahalo is “we’re here to help,” and after 15 days of tremendous feedback we’ve learned one thing: you want to help too!”
Mahalo is paying 10-15$ for each submitted search result that is approved by the full-time Guides and published to the web search. They start accepting applications for part-time Guides today, and they’re looking for people who are willing to help “a lot”, with extra consideration to those who can help them spread the word through their existing social networks and/or blogs.
Meanwhile, Calcanis added, for those who want to contribute to Mahalo and are not concerned with getting money in return, payment goes to the Wikimedia Foundation. Know more about how the Mahalo Greenhouse works here.
Originally posted on June 13, 2007 @ 12:14 pm