And on the 3rd Day, Cuil Lists Itself on Search for “Cuil”

Cuil Appears on CuilNote to self: when creating a new search engine with $33 million in funding, remember to list your website on the front page when people search for you.

Somehow, the Cuil algorithm missed it for a couple of days.  No worries.  Problem solved.  On this, the third day since it’s launch, Cuil has listed itself when someone does a search for “Cuil”.

As reported in TechCrunch and further explored in Soshable, this wasn’t the case for a little while.  In the hustle and bustle of promoting the launch of the site, this one minor detail slipped through the cracks, adding to the flurry of poor reviews that followed hours after its Monday launch.

Here is a screenshot of the search before the algorithm either corrected itself or it was manually updated following the discover of the omission: Read more

Please buy me a cup of coffee.

July 30, 2008 | Filed Under StartUps | 5 Comments 

Propeller. Fail.

The reviews are starting to roll in.  There are only two possible conclusions so far: either the community will need some time to get used to the new changes over at Propeller, or the changes were a bad move.  The initial feelings of the community can best be described when you look at the current (as of 12am PST 7-23-08) top front page story.  Here is a screenshot:

Propeller New Design

Not good.  Not good at all.  And yes, for those who don’t use or haven’t been there yet, that is an actual screenshot that was actually accepted by the actual decision makers at AOL.

Please buy me a cup of coffee.

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under Social Internet | 34 Comments 

Digg Recommendation Engine Enlarges the Gap between the Top Submitters and the Other Millions of Users

A Digg Analysis post on popFAIL reveals an alarming “widening of the gap” between the top users and the middle users. In the report, an analysis was done of the last 500 stories to reach the front page of Digg, a period that encompasses the lifespan of the Digg Recommendation Engine. The results are probably not what Digg had in mind.

31.4% of the stories that have hit the front page of Digg were submitted by 10 users.

Let me repeat.

Digg, the most visited social news voting site on the Internet with 26 million monthly visits has nearly one-third of its front page content submitted by 10 people.

Digg Front Page

Read more

Please buy me a cup of coffee.

July 5, 2008 | Filed Under Social News Sites, digg, social media | 5 Comments