The long-awaited blog search engine Sphere launches at 10 PM tonight. In this episode of Talkcrunch we speak with Tony Conrad and Toni Schneider about the Sphere story.
Tony Conrad is the CEO and co-founder of Sphere. Toni Schneider, formerly the CEO of Oddpost, is currently the CEO of Automattic (wordpress.com, wordpress.org, etc.) and an advisor to Sphere. In the podcast we talk about the motivation to starting Sphere, what problems it solves and how it competes along with some of the challenges and technical problems involved in developing a blog search engine. There are some very interesting insights here from two guys who have been involved in working with blogs and new web technologies for a long time.
The TechCrunch post on the launch of Sphere is here.
Running Time: 58:05
Size: 51.3 MB
[...] Tony Conrad’s new blog search engine Sphere launched just moments ago and has also announced a $3.75 million round of venture financing. In addition to covering the launch of Sphere here, we have a podcast interview with CEO Tony Conrad and advisor Toni Schneider over at TalkCrunch. [...]
[...] Le nouveau moteur de recherche pour blogs Sphere vient à peine d’ouvrir et a aussi annoncé un tour de table de $3.75 millions. Un podcast avec son CEO Toni Schneider est aussi disponible sur TalkCrunch. [...]
[...] Congratulations to Tony and all the Sphere team on going live today. As an early beta tester of the weblog discovery engine I have watched it come on in leaps and bounds since first trying it. Results have become significantly more authoritative, relevant and timely over the last three months. So much so that it has moved from my sandbox to my toolbox. Michael Arrington and Nik Cubrilovic chat with CEO Tony Conrad and advisor Toni Schneider about the past, present and future for Sphere. Ryan Freitas at design gurus Adaptive Path recently shared how they helped develop and refine the offering. Make sure to tryout the excellent bookmarklet feature and checkout their weblog to keep in touch with future developments. [...]
35? I count 64 on your homepage, it varies a bit with the popular terms that you have listed. But still the 35 you claim seems a little off the mark.
In terms of interface I am far from impressed with the site. The results look cramped. The input field for the search has too bold text I think. In terms of results the indenting for the extra results from the same blog seems pretty random. And finally in terms for need for this sort of website? There is no need. Technorati is hugely successful. Google Blog Search is a simpler view if you want it. Why would anyone use Sphere?
I notice that although Nik pressed on what the sphere guys saw missing in the blog search tools that existed when the started out the answer they gave was seriously lacking any content.
(64 was the number at the time of posting this comment)
Hi
I tried to listen to the Lauch of Shere is Here Podcast but the audio feed kept on delaying the broadcast - buffering.
I dont believe the problem is at my laptop, so maybe its a problem with your PodCast server?
Thanks
Sphere: New Blog Search Engine Launches…
A unique feature is the Profile link next to your results….
TalkCrunch rocks. I really love listening to it.
Sphere is certainly interesting but Technorati already has “search by authority”.
Comparing the results of Technorati and Sphere, Technorati is the clear winner.
[...] An interesting new blog search engine called Sphere just launched. I learned about it on TalkCrunch’s latest podcast. Specifically, check out their Sphere It! bookmarklet. This is going to be quite interesting. It looks like Technorati has a strong new competitor on its hands. [...]
[...] The algorhythms used to identify relevance seem interesting - I was listening to a TechCrunch podcast interview with the people behind this and they seemed to be talking a lot of sense in terms of how they approached ‘relevance.’ I wonder whether it’s worth some of us in CDT and the VLC at SHU installing the Sphere bookmarklet and evaluating its usefulness in terms of identifying good information? Simililarly I wonder if there’s need for a LITS project that evaluates Web2.0 and therefore Library 2.0 technologies? [...]
Technorati’s “authority” is a sham. There is no authority due to link counts. Who knows if the links all came yesterday or over the past six months, and they are easily gamed for other reasons. Authority is subject. What Technorati has is a popularity index.
Authority and popularity are not the same thing. Technorati is the winner if you want popularity, but if you want knowledge, conversation and influence, you will need to look further.
[...] sphere サンフランシスコにあるブログを対象にした検索エンジン。６ヶ月で２倍という驚異的なスピードで増えているブログの世界をスマートに小さくすることが出来ないものか、という発想から生まれた検索エンジン。検索結果に時間的な要素（タイムリーな話題性、時間軸で検索）、ブログ本文を解析してスパムを排除。残念ながら英語のブログしかインデックスしていないようです。Apollo とか今話題になっていそうなキーワードがブログでどんな風に話されているのか調べるのには便利。Hearst Publishing、Trident Capital、Scott Kurnit 氏（About.com のファウンダー）などから約４億円の投資を集めています。Wordpress.org の Toni Schneider 氏がアドバイザーをつとめています。SphereのCEO Tony Conradのポッドキャスト（TalkCrunch） [...]