A couple of weeks ago I saw Blekko, the as yet unlaunced search startup from Rich Skrenta (formerly of Topix and other significant places). Yesterday TechCrunch made an early positive assessment of the site after taking a look:
“Stunningly cool.” I direct messaged Skrenta on Twitter this morning: your success is assured. Seriously, that’s a pretty strong endorsement from the most visible general tech blog in the market.
In some ways, Blekko can be said to be the “anti-Bing.” Hate the name Blekko? They don’t care; they like it.
While Microsoft’s new Bing (which I like BTW) features a lush interface and lots of high-end functionality, Blekko is stripped down and spartan — but in a different way than Google is. I won’t offer a review of Blekko, which would be premature because the site won’t launch until later this year. But I will say that Skrenta and Mike Markson, among others behind Blekko, are being smart and understand well who their audience is. They’re not aspiring to the kind of broad audience appeal that Bing is going after. And that will help them with the press and to build their following.
As I said in my SEL piece comparing Bing and Google I don’t yet know how audiences will respond to Bing and whether it will gain traction over time. But my intuition is that Blekko will quickly “imprint” on its intended audience and that they will embrace the search engine in earnest.
We’ll see if I’m right.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 30th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 30th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 1:05 am
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 3:02 am
Is the target audience super tech-savvy people, say software developer types?
May 31st, 2009 at 3:15 am
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 11:35 am
[...] more Blekko, check out Screenwerk, which believes Blekko “will quickly “imprint” on its intended audience and that they [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 1:03 pm
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 9:46 pm
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June 1st, 2009 at 12:30 am
[...] Bing vs. Blekko: A Difference in Attitude A couple of weeks ago I saw Blekko, the as yet unlaunced search startup from Rich Skrenta (formerly of Topix and other [...] [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 12:39 am
[...] では、昨日今日のわずかなざわめきは何なのか。同社は今年中にスタートを目指して準備中であり、それに向けて資金を集めているところだ。そして商品の内容をもう少しだけ見せはじめた。われわれは感銘を受けた。みんなも同じだ。 [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 8:33 am
Otis: Not exactly but that’s not too far off. Software developers is too narrow. It is for the public but a slice of that public at least initially.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
[...] So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others. [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 6:07 am
[...] Screenwork reports they’re “happy with the name Blekko,” if you were a stealth startup, wouldn’t you say that? They’ll probably change [...]
December 13th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Well – let’s see – if it’s doesn’t work on PR great – PR has wrecked the web
http://celebsfamous.com – here’s a Massive site with no traffic because of no PR – check for yourself – nude celebs is one of the top contested search terms online – the “trusted” sites have this and other search terms (non adult also) locked up in their own networks of sites and it’s impossible to break in – IF BLEKKO makes the net a level playing field great
July 26th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
[...] that will launch relatively soon. It has been written about several times by TechCrunch and I wrote about it briefly a year ago after an initial demo from founder Rich Skrenta and Mike Markson. Danny intends to do a “deep [...]
July 29th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Greg,
I’m confident you’ll be proven right about Blekko’s target audience of power searchers. The timing seems good, too. Liked your Craig Silverstein quote. A few years back, when Marissa said search would get more social, Blekko appears to be the (pre-realtime/universal search) stripped-down version she may have originally envisioned.
Glad you included the NYT property About.com. I’ve always viewed them as the pioneers of low-cost content generation. Their freelancers were motivated primarily by a desire to exhibit domain expertise. While the “expert guides” often linked to outside sources, the focus was always on creating vertical content for targeted ads, writing short posts and linking to previous/related About.com articles.
Enjoyed Danny’s deep dive into Blekko, too.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Thanks Kevin.