Mahalo.com was a
web directory
A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and th ...
(or
human search engine A human search engine was a search engine that used human participation to filter the search results and assist users in clarifying their search request. The goal is to provide users with a limited number of relevant results, as opposed to tradition ...
) and
Internet-based knowledge exchange
A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, ...
(
Question-and-answer website
The following is a list of websites that follow a question-and-answer format. The list contains only websites for which an article exists, dedicated either wholly or at least partly to the websites.
For the ''humor'' "Q&A site" format first popul ...
) launched in May 2007 by
Jason Calacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York. His second venture, Weblogs, Inc., a publishing company tha ...
. It differentiated itself from algorithmic search engines like
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
and
Ask.com
Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) is a question answering–focused e-business founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.
The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky, from his own design. Wa ...
, as well as other directory sites like
DMOZ
DMOZ (from ''directory.mozilla.org'', an earlier domain name, stylized in lowercase in its logo) was a multilingual open-content directory of World Wide Web links. The site and community who maintained it were also known as the Open Directory ...
and
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
by tracking and building hand-crafted result sets for many of the currently popular search terms.
President Jason Rapp exited the company in September, 2012.
In 2014, Calacanis announced that Mahalo would enter
server sunset
In the realm of information technology (IT), to sunset a server
Server may refer to:
Computing
*Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients
Role
* Waiting staff, t ...
as he moved his focus towards an app called Inside. He was quoted by
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...
saying "it makes 7 figures so we’re not shutting it off but we are not investing in it". Mahalo's website has since shut down.
Directory
Mahalo.com contracted human editors to review
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
s and write
search engine results page
Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user. The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query. The p ...
s that include text listings, as well as other media, such as photos and video. Each Mahalo search results page included links to the top seven sites, as well as other categorized information, and additional web pages from Google.
The company also paid freelancers to create pages for piecework compensation.
Mahalo.com also offered "how to" guides.
Mahalo Answers
On December 15, 2008, Mahalo launched a new service called Mahalo Answers, similar to
Yahoo! Answers
Yahoo! Answers was a community-driven question-and-answer (Q&A) website or knowledge market owned by Yahoo! where users would ask questions and answer those submitted by others, and upvote them to increase their visibility. Questions were org ...
. A key difference was that Mahalo Answers allowed questioners to give a monetary reward (called a "tip") to the user who provided the most helpful response.
Mobile applications
The company developed mobile
apps, such as ''Learn Guitar''.
Criticism
At the ''SMX Conference'' in June 2007, Google software engineer
Matt Cutts
Matthew Cutts (born 1972 or 1973) is an American software engineer. Cutts is the former Administrator of the United States Digital Service. He was first appointed as acting administrator, to later be confirmed as full administrator in October 20 ...
explained that while he supports different approaches to search it is untrue that humans have nothing to do with Google's search results. Cutts has categorized mahalo.com as spam. He used the terms "cookie cutter", "no value" and "no original content" to describe the website and described Jason Calacanis as "skilled... at baiting people" in the context of running Mahalo.com.
Corporate details
Ownership and funding
Lead investors in Mahalo.com included
Sequoia Capital's
Michael Moritz
Sir Michael Jonathan Moritz (born 12 September 1954) is a Welsh billionaire venture capitalist, philanthropist, author, and former journalist. Moritz works for Sequoia Capital, wrote the first history of Apple Inc., '' The Little Kingdom'', ...
;
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...
, founder of
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
; and
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
.
Other disclosed investors include
Dallas Mavericks owner
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...
and
AOL chairman
Ted Leonsis
Theodore John Leonsis (born January 8, 1957) is an American businessman, investor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and former politician. He is a former senior executive with America Online (AOL), and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Monument ...
Jason Calacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York. His second venture, Weblogs, Inc., a publishing company tha ...
said in 2008 that he has enough funding to run Mahalo for four or five years without making a profit.
Traffic and growth
Mahalo.com traffic had increased from roughly ten thousand visitors a month in July 2007, to two million visitors a month in January 2008.
On March 1, 2011, Calacanis and company president, Jason Rapp, announced via email that the recent changes in the
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
search algorithm had significantly reduced traffic, resulting in the need to lay off about 10% of Mahalo employees. According to software firm Sistrix, Mahalo's Google generated search traffic declined by over 75% after these changes were made. In 2014, Jason Calacanis stated that these
Google Panda
Google Panda is a major change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", in particular " content farms", and return higher-qual ...
updates had been "killing" Mahalo, which once had $10 million in yearly advertising revenue, that he had to lay off 80 full-time remote workers as a result, and that he desired "revenge" against Google and their web spam expert Matt Cutts.
References
{{reflist, 2
Question-and-answer websites
Companies based in Los Angeles County, California
Online companies of the United States
Internet search engines
Internet properties established in 2007
Pay-per-click search engines
Human-edited search engines
MediaWiki websites
Social search
Knowledge markets