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March 13, 2006
Vast Launches: Search as Content
I've been messing with a new search service for a little while now, something called, appropriately enough, Vast.com (the site's password protection will come off tomorrow). I wrote about it and its founder Naval Ravikant a few months ago here. At the time I somewhat coyly held back what Ravikant (the ex-CEO of Epinions) and his team at what used to be known as Omni-Explorer Technologies were doing, but it all comes public tomorrow (Tuesday) with the launch of Vast.So, what is it? In essence Vast is a classifieds vertical search service -- but one with an important twist. Before getting to the twist, however, you need to know the context and scope. Vast is big, really really big. The folks there argue that it is the biggest search service for cars, and one of the biggest for the other categories it currently searches (jobs and people).
Now, big used to be cool, of course. But size envy in search is kinda over, isn't it? I mean, does anyone really pay attention anymore to who has the biggest search set? Not really. It's not how big it is, it's what you do with it that counts.
Mind you, the Vast folks make a strong case that size matters more in classifieds than anywhere else. As Ravikant pointed out to me, each classifieds item corresponds to a real-world object, and thus more size means better filtering, which is crucial once you start cutting your search set by trimming, say, cars, on mileage, location, price, etc. What's more, search set size allows you to better control how much spam you're willing to include in your final data set, in a sense trading quantity for quality.
Whatever your views on search size, Naval & Co. have an interesting and big "What to do with it" idea. They are encouraging you (yes you) to steal it. Take it. Use their data. Freely. Want API-level access to the biggest classifieds search set on the Internet? It's all yours. Just sign up for a Vast API key and bang away (via a REST-ful interface) up to 50,000 times a day. If you want any more than that then Vast's developer text politely asks that you contact them so they can "provision the site accordingly". That's a fascinating idea, especially given that Vast makes its data available for both commercial and non-commercial uses. About the only thing you can't do with it is create your own crawler or spider. So what does that leave? Anything, from advanced analytics, to data repackaging, to grand-scale mashups -- it's all yours.
To my way of thinking, it's search as content. It is a kind of classifieds search broadcast to anyone who wants to play receiver and build other content or tools on top. And like any broadcast service, the revenue model is a combination of ads and subscriptions. But in this case the broadcast ad revenue come from people who are users of the Vast content. So, say you incorporate Vast search content in your site, then be prepared for it to eventually include ads from the Vast ad network. It seems a fair trade, especially given that Vast says the majority of the ad revenue would go to the site displaying the data.
So, will it work? While it's an interesting idea, and I'm a fan of rethinking search in this daa-centric broadcast-ish way, the test will be to find people with a hunger to build a few interesting applications on top of Vast. Build those apps and Vast can become a new-style platform for search, a species of search operating system.
Sphere It
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Digg it
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Bookmark it
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Stumble it
Neat idea, but odd execution. I'm in the market for a pickup truck; I don't care what make it is, or what model, and on vast.com there's no way I can search for it. Therefore, visit once, test, fail, and I won't go back until I hear a lot more good things about vast.
"Steal this content"? It should be called "show our advertising on your site".
It's not a free and unrestricted API if you are required to advertise Vast and show Vast's advertising on your website.
"It's all yours", you say? I guess that depends on how vulgar your definition of "it" is.
Hey Greg -- Got some closet socialist tendencies? I'm kidding.
Okay, I was making my point in somewhat exaggerated fashion, but the essence is the same: Without putting any cash down, now or ever, you have access to a considerable amount of search data. While that will likely eventually come with a quid pro quo (ads in some to-be-determined form), that is not so onerous, at least to my way of thinking -- and you do get to benefit financially from the ads.
That's a fair point, Paul. I have to admit, I may be swinging too far the other way here, overreacting to the exaggerations.
Hmmm, big yes, but outdated listings. I thought Vast would be cool, but when I did searches for both jobs and cars, literally every listing that I clicked on (over 20) had expired.
Nice Post. Good to see search engines too are targetting specific verticals. Few days back I blogged about Krugle, a search engine specific for source Code (http://pcmspace.com/wp/?p=48).
Few things about Vast,
- It lack sorting criteria's in Job search.
- User redirected to other site when, say clicks on "Vehicle History" thus looses control from original site.
- Refine search option to be on the front page rather than after first search hit.
@S
http://www.pcmspace.com