Mahalo.com
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| Type of business | Internet |
|---|---|
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Type of site
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Directory |
| Available in | English |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Founder(s) | Jason Calacanis |
| Key people |
Jason Calacanis, Founding CEO Elliot C.R. Cook, COO Bundy Kim, CTO |
| Revenue | Unknown, Startup May 2007 |
| Employees | 20 |
| Slogan(s) | "Learn Anything" |
| Website | mahalo.com (defunct) |
| Advertising | Google AdSense |
| Launched | May 30, 2007 |
| Current status | Beta |
Mahalo.com was a web directory (or human search engine) and Internet-based knowledge exchange (question and answer site) launched in May 2007 by Jason Calacanis. It differentiated itself from algorithmic search engines like Google and Ask.com, as well as other directory sites like DMOZ and Yahoo! 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 be sunset as he moved his focus towards an app called Inside. He was quoted by TechCrunch 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.
Mahalo.com contracted human editors to review websites and write search engine results pages 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
On December 15, 2008, Mahalo launched a new service called Mahalo Answers, similar to Yahoo! Answers 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.
The company developed mobile apps, such as Learn Guitar.
At the SMX Conference in June 2007, Google software engineer Matt Cutts 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 orignial content" to describe the website and described Jason Calacanis as "skilled..at baiting people" in the context of running Mahalo.com .
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