Elanso

I’ll be honest (and perhaps a bit shocking) - online search just doesn’t excite me. Most of the time when I see a new entrant to the search industry or I look at usage data relating to search, I groan a bit inwardly. Perhaps it’s because we live in a world now where we can’t imagine anything unseating Google as the king of search, or perhaps it’s because online searching has become so utilitarian, talking about it is about like talking about your door knob or your coffee maker. Sure, there are some cool variations on the theme, but at the end of the day, a door knob is a door knob.

And then came Mahalo, with a business model so counter-intuitive, it is utterly intriguing. Despite everyone’s dire predictions for the company, they’ve actually done fairly well for themselves. They haven’t yet come close to upsetting Google, but speaking for myself, they’ve come to represent an important research utility in my online tool chest. I haven’t quite caught the fire and passion for the company that founder Jason Calacanis clearly has for it, but at times I catch glimpses of it, and I recognize that it’s definitely a disruptive company to keep one’s eye on.

That’s partly why the news of a major announcement coming tomorrow from the SES conference by Mahalo piqued my interest (an announcement that our own Adam Hirsch will be getting the skinny on for us). Allen Stern sat down with Tyler Crowley and Jason Calacanis from Mahalo to get a bit of a preview of what’s coming tomorrow. He didn’t come right out and say exactly what the announcement is going to be about, but from the discussion Stern describes in his posts, it sounds like it’ll have something to do with the success/deployment of affiliate-based advertising as a business model for Mahalo:

Jason explained that Mahalo has added affiliate links where they make sense. Currently they are working with Amazon and Commission Junction. Links are added by the Mahalo guides and greenhouse workers as they create the pages.

The majority of pages on Mahalo are “rich” for advertising. With that said, affiliate revenue could surpass Google AdSense revenue for Mahalo in the long-term.

Tomorrow will bring news of this and possibly other things, so we’ll be waiting with baited breath until then.

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