Two Slashes

Caution:  This post includes gratuitous amounts of speculation about web services and the Internet in general.  If you prefer to deal in the world of concretes, I suggest you read yesterday’s newspaper instead.  Or send me a cement mixer.

Almost a year ago, we had Cuil.  Claiming to be an instant success over Google, and even grabbing up some of the behemoth’s staff, Cuil ultimately did exactly what most people expected to happen:  it flopped.  Earlier this year, Wolfram released Alpha and came to the realization that, while people are looking for the facts, their approach isn’t one that applies universally.  And at the beginning of June, Microsoft decided that they wanted to “Bing it on” and found that renaming your search engine might earn them a place above Yahoo!, but it doesn’t really get anywhere near the top, especially when marketed as a “decision engine.”  And now, I think someone’s going to try again.

To be honest, none of the major tech outlets have anything to say about them (yet), and the only reason I know of their plan is through their increasingly-common spidering of this blog.  Bear with me a moment, because I’m sure you’re just as confused as I was.

A quick glance at Apnoti’s home page doesn’t tell you much about their intentions.  In fact, all you really find out is that they seem to have been playing a variation of the product search game for more than a year, and they’ve differentiated themselves by offering the ability to watch prices on Amazon for the things you want.  To the best of my knowledge and examination, there’s no explanation for or mention of any other projects they’re working on available for consumption.

Beneath the shopping lies hopes and dreams of being something more, though.  The page hosted on the subdomain that keeps showing up in my statistics (smart.apnoti.com) is simple enough, bearing only a countdown to August and the suggestion that real-time search is coming.  But what’s left to search in real time?  My guess:  blogs and other sites refreshed with new content at semi-regular rates.  Think about it.  Google Blog Search might exist, but it’s far from showing you what’s happening in real time (unless you enjoy hitting refresh repeatedly, that is), and scraping Twitter only gets you so far, especially when there are already so many variants.

If what I envision is true, imagine being able to type in a recent event, like Michael Jackson’s death, and watch as the blogosphere fills up with reports and commentaries about the event.  Not trivial-length blurbs and “I can’t believe this happened!”-type posts, but posts of a reasonable length and with some backing to them.  It’s a niche that I have yet to see filled, and I think it has the potential to be a great service, provided the sites they index maintain some level of credibility.  (If you need a description, imagine something along the lines of Twitter Search, Facebook’s timeline, or Profilactic as your search results page, sorted with the newest posts first, and the ability to click a link and have any new results that have shown up populate into your present view.

Whether there’s a market for this sort of thing is another question altogether.  There’s no doubt that everyone and everything is moving toward real-time information sharing, so it makes sense to me that this is a logical step along that route.  On the other hand, such a move is a costly risk; one false move, one mistake, and all that hard work becomes a black hole for money.  There’s also the massive resource requirement to consider, as it’s no easy task to index the countless blogs available online and come away with even a decent index of all the content they offer.  Add to that the load required to keep their results fresh and relevant, and the requirement shoots up even further.

Of course, I’ve proven that I have a mediocre track record when it comes to predictions, so I might just be further cementing myself as a crackpot when Apnoti decides to open up the site as some sort of gadget guide.  However, even if I’m far off, I would still like to see this idea.  One day.