I told both Jason and CK awhile back that I'd pass along my thoughts. I wanted to sit back for awhile and watch how things all started to develop before offering up anything.

There are two users to a search engine. You have the person searching for information, and you have the person providing the information. In the case of Mahalo, the first use-case I get. Curated, edited, focused information that I'm looking for. In fact, I had my first Mahalo moment while searching for information on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and Mahalo was a big help. Awesome.

But when Dave Winer mentioned that Jason didn't bring a Win-Win to Gnomedex, it struck me as the words that I was looking for to describe the second use-case, although he probably meant his words in a little bit different context.

The second use-case falls flat on its ass. There is currently zero incentive for a blog author/content producer to support Mahalo. On Google, the value proposition is clear -- the more people a producer suggests to Google, the more people who are using it. The more people who are using it, the more traffic the producer's site ultimately gets. Yes, some people cheat and get more traffic than they should, but ultimately everyone has a chance to receive "votes" by way of organic links. It's a classic win win.

When Mahalo first launched with curated results, the existence of this proposition was at least debatable. Google backfill kept the basics of a search engine in play. Now that Mahalo is producing original content instead of SeRPs, however, it isn't really a search engine, but a knowledge base. From a content producer's point of view, why on earth would they want to contribute pagerank/trust rank/support to something that will ultimately overtake their keywords and traffic on Google? The slightest change in the rankings can dramatically affect a sites ad sales/conversions/whatever. Supplemental information makes sense I suppose, it's just like linking to a blog post. But again, that's seems like an awkward conflict of interest in the role of a search engine.

Remember when Google started giving their properties premium placement in the SeRPs? The damn near riot that almost ensued? People were grabbing pitch forks and lighting torches chanting "do no evil". That's nothing compared to the outrage people would have if Google started indexing their own open-ended random content on all subjects ahead of their second group of users, the content producers.

Mahalo will probably succeed with whatever Jason does. Answers.com, about.com, wikipedia, etc are all really popular high traffic sites. They just all happen to also be incredibly boring. If Mahalo wants to be exciting and redefine search (which seems to be J's stated goal), then it needs to create a win-win for the people who are building out the rest of the web. Figure that out, and Mahalo stands a chance to really help a lot of people.

UPDATE: In fairness, I should note that while sitting here thinking about the win-win comment, I saw the mahalo "how to write a resume" link scroll by on delicious. Talk about putting it all into context ;)
UPDATE #2: Both Jason and CK respond in the comments.

Helped Launch Netscape.com

It was June 15th that we put the beta Netscape online. Love it or hate it, we certainly made waves ;)

It was a project I wasn't initially supposed to be involved with, at least, not to the extent that I was. When Jason and Brian took over the netscape.com domain, I was offered the opportunity to go to AOL sort of as a netscape/weblogs, inc contact for Blogsmith. Gavin, Mike and I had been working on Blogsmith for a few months and Blogsmith was a small indie startup still. Moving one of us to the "inside" made sense.

At some point last March, the three of us flew out to meet the Netscape team at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. One thing led to another, and I was asked to be the lead developer for the project through the product launch. The next couple of months were absolutely insane. Kathryn was out in California so I was left on my own in DC and pretty much worked around the clock. We launched the beta on June 15, 2006 and then spent the next month or two cleaning things up. We overloaded the servers, we got hacked, we had less functionality than we initially anticipated, we had scope creep into areas we didn't plan for -- you name it, and we dealt with it, all in a very short amount of time for a project of that size.

My reason for joining Netscape was to tackle the challenge of launching under such a tight deadline. Once things calmed down and things were humming along, Blogsmith happened to be purchased by AOL. I was able to slowly (perhaps without his full knowing/understanding) delegate most everything to Tom (suckah!), and transfer back to rejoin Gavin, Mike and by then, Celly on the Blogsmith project.

I was the first to drop off Netscape I guess, soon followed by Jason and then C.K.. The current team though is absolutely incredible and firing on all cylinders. The developers over there are top notch and working on some amazing technology that will certainly shake things up when its released.

It's been a hell of a year and a half personally, and Netscape is a big part of the story. I'll never forget someone ease dropping on our conversations out in LA, seeing it posted in the Digg comments and then everyone successfully burying it before it gained any strength. Riding segways around Venice with groups of people yelling "Freaks!!" at us and Jason, for some reason, acting like a Robot the whole time. Or discussing the merits of the Viceroy's amazingly delicious bacon with Wil Wheaton. Of course, using the then newly launched Emurse.com to staff up was enjoyable as well ;) (nod to Finke) (yea, I know, a plug.. I couldn't help myself)

I think the biggest lessons I learned was to sleep when I'm tired (oops), how to work with a boss like Jason (notoriously demanding) , script kiddies will always find a way, script kiddies don't like being called script kiddies, when talking to the press you're always on record and most importantly, anything in any amount of time is possible if you have a dedicated and focused enough team. Distance be damned.

Congrats on a successful first year for Netscape.com (the social edition). I absolutely can not wait to see the things planned for the next year. Trey and his team are men amongst men, and Tom's dedication and leadership holds great promise for the entire Netscape brand. Keep it up guys -- NETSCAPE FTW!

UPDATE: I've been quoted in the Netscape article on the same topic, "Happy Birthday, Netscape"