OPEN

Wikiasari to be most mis-pronounced search engine in 2007

* * Correction / upadate: please see most recent post on this topic for up to date facts * *

Personally I think that computers and maths is the best way to make search work – at least it has been so far. That is to say, uncontroversially, since it wins 75%+ of searches in the UK, that Google has been right up to now.

Nonetheless, it is intriguing, to say the least, to see Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales deciding to launch a new search engine: Wikiasari.

It’s already set to be the most talked about name in web circles in the beginning of 2007 – if only because innovators and pedants will enjoy the opportunity to correct early adopters’ pronunciation and spelling (they won’t mind though, it means they get to do the same thing to early majority types – see the Diffusion of Condescension model for details of how snideness drives take-up of new technologies).

Mike Arrington has an exclusive screenshot and is in no way dying to Skype Sam Sethi to tell him that correcting people’s mis-pronounciations is so last week as everyone’s going to call it Wikisearch anyway…

[ IMAGE REMOVED – see most most recent post]

 

Technorati tags: , , wikisearch, wikiasari,
Antony Mayfield

3 responses to “Wikiasari to be most mis-pronounced search engine in 2007”

  1. mr.charlieo Avatar
    mr.charlieo

    Hi there Mr Mayfield – this is an exciting project indeed, but as others (notably TechCrunch) you’ve used a screenshot circulating the web that’s actually nothing to do with Jimmy Wales’ new project.

    I draw your attention to:

    http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Wikisearch

    Wikisearch is not a search engine of the World Wide Web, and is not related to this site “Search Wikia” and to the plans for community-created search of the World Wide Web.

    The screenshot is of the temporarily named ‘WikiSearch’ which I believe is just an amalgamation of search results (from MSN Live Search>?) mashed together with related wikipedia external links.

    The name’s also been dropped methinks, presumably due to complete unpronouncability/tech-snobbery potential:

    “Wikiasari is and will not be the name for the free search engine we’re developing. It was the name of a former project ”

    actually the name for the background beta version of wikia’s software component, full story here:

    http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:About

  2. Keith Eysmun Avatar
    Keith Eysmun

    The most talked about search engine in 2007 will be Google. Guaranteed.

    This Wikiasari project sounds doomed to me, as I explain in these two blog posts:

    http://keysmun.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-wikiasari-will-fail.html
    http://keysmun.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-developers-wont-work-on-wikiasari.html

  3. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Thanks for your comment, Keith. I agree with a lot of the points you make.

    Mr Charlieo – I did post a comment in response to your kind comment but it didn\\\’t appear (see my post about comment problems with Typepad).

    Hopefully you\\\’ve seen the correction post I put up – the other thing I said was: when can we expect to see a blog from you: reckon it\\\’s high time you got one going :-)

Leave a Reply