Archive for July, 2008

Jul200828

Chris Baskind

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How Cuil Is It to Misspell Your Brand Name?

The search game got a little more interesting Monday with the launch of Cuil, the next Google wannabe. But it was a rough first day.

Cuil

Everybody loves a giant killer, so there was no shortage of online ink today over the public debut of Cuil, a new engine which claims to search “more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.”

Cuil couldn’t fail to whistle up a tempest of launch coverage. Staffed by former Google employees with $33 million worth of investment capital at their backs, the secretive startup hinted at a new kind of search based on content, rather than link popularity (an oversimplification of Google’s methodology). All very exciting stuff.


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Jul200824

Chris Baskind

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Why Twitter Must Die

Whether Twitter’s most recent technical failures prove fatal isn’t the question. The point is that they really should be.

A dead yellow rose

It’s hard to get too angry at a free service — particularly one which has been so enjoyed by its users. Which is why, when my frustration levels with Twitter passed the redline, I signed-off in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner.

For those who don’t labor in the dark seam of geekdom, Twitter is a microblogging service. Part instant messaging system, part bulletin board, Twitter has elevated the simple question “What are you doing?” to a bustling community of users and software developers. And unlike many small tech startups, Twitter has managed to carry its 140-character gospel well beyond the early adopter crowd. This week’s 1,400 word feature writeup in USA Today is ample evidence of Twitter’s breakout appeal.


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