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
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
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.
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.