Short Wowd demo (screencast)

Boris' demo at the TechCrunch event has generated a lot of interest in Wowd. People liked the description he gave, but have been saying that it's hard to see the screen in any detail in the video that was posted after the event.

So, we thought we could address that with a short screencast.

This screencast only skims the surface of what Wowd can do. It focuses on the idea that Wowd can show you the most popular content, and that it can also find you content in real time, from across the entire web.

(That is, unlike many "real-time search engines", Wowd delivers content from across the entire web, not just from a few select web sites.)

We're still learning how to do an effective screencast, so our efforts in this department will improve quickly!  Of course, your feedback is most welcome.

If you want to, you can watch the screencast at YouTube, rather here in the Wowd blog.

Comments

[Bill St.Pierre]

the video is great, but what are the benefits to using wowd over google? why is wowd better? potential searchers will want to know this....

[Mark Drummond]

Great question!

We hope the answer is clear, and clear in two parts...

First, you use Wowd if you want to find popular information. Google is good at finding information that's commonly referenced by other web pages. Wowd is good (by design) at finding information that's popular with real human beings.

Second you use Wowd if you want to find information in real time, from across the entire web. Other real-time search engines are good at finding information in real time from a crazy-small set of target sites. Wowd can give you minute-by-minute results from across the entire web. That's a powerful thing.

So, we'd suggest that you use Wowd if you want to find popular information (ranked by real people), and have your results delivered in real time. That's what's different about Wowd, as compared with Google.

[Brynn Evans]

Interesting. But what does that mean: "popularity by real people" ... "that other people think are good"? Isn't PageRank a popularity metric, too, based on real people creating links between pages?

I like how you incorporate discovery elements into the search experience.

[Igor Kabiljo]

You are right, but there is a big difference.
PageRank is a popularity metric based on website creators, and our popularity metric is based on website users.
There are many reasons why that is better - from links that someone payed to be there, to regular spam.

Even though now more and more people influence web content, it is still mostly small weight in whole PageRank of some page.

[Mark Drummond]

Here's one way to think of it. Pages point to other pages, and ranking algorithms that do math over that graph structure essentially measure popularity in terms that are driven by web site publishers. That is, it's the owners of web sites who control the links to other pages, other sites. Thus, it's the owners of web sites (the publishers) that drive popularity in existing link-based measurement schemes.

Wowd embraces the idea that readers should be in control, not publishers. So the link-based math implemented by Wowd takes into account the actual transition probabilities of people, through the graph of web of pages. This ranking more accurately measures page popularity, as represented by real people.

Note that just because there's a link between two pages, it doesn't mean that any real people actually follow that link! Link spam is a well-known problem, and Wowd aims to get around it. Wowd delivers true popularity-based ranking, in a way that scales to cover many billions of web pages.

[Michael Martinez]

Every basic human behavior on the Web was automated in the 1990s. Whether you count clicks, links, or page views to determine "popularity", the software and networks have long been in place to manipulate that data.

I wish you luck, but it sounds like you're not ready to take on the professional search manipulation industry. They don't blog about what they're doing or share their ideas at conferences where search engineers can listen quietly.

They do, however, sell their services to a lot of companies.

I think you should focus on your user-side interface and avoid getting drawn into the "we won't be manipulated" trap. Google made that claim and they subsequentaly earned the nick name TSETSPB - The Search Engine That Spam Built.

Think about that.

[Mark Drummond]

Excellent counsel!

It's early days for us, and we're not in a position yet to claim any particular success in avoiding spam -- but we have plans there.

Step one is to offer an awesome user experience in finding popular and fresh information. Fighting off spam is an HQP (*) that comes later.

(*) High Quality Problem