Kosmix Adds Rocketfuel to Power Voyage of Exploration
By: Anand Rajaraman
Scootin’
Today I’m delighted to share some fantastic news. Kosmix has raised $20 million in new financing to power our growth. Even more than the amount of financing, I’m especially proud that the lead investor in this round is Time Warner, the world’s largest media company. Our existing investors Lightspeed, Accel, and DAG participated in the round as well. The Kosmix team also is greatly strengthened by the addition of Ed Zander as investor and strategic advisor. In an amazing career that spans Sun Microsystems and Motorola, Ed has repeatedly demonstrated leadership that grew good ideas into great products and businesses. His counsel will be invaluable as we take Kosmix to the next level as a business.
In these perilous economic times, the funding is a big vote of confidence in Kosmix’s product and business. Kosmix web sites attract 11 million visits every month, and we have a proven revenue model with significant revenues and robust growth. RightHealth, the proof-of-concept we launched in 2007, grew with astonishing rapidity to become the #2 health web site in the US. These factors played a big role in helping us close this round of funding with a healthy uptick in valuation from our prior round. Together with the money already in the bank from our prior rounds, we now have more than enough runway to take the company to profitability and beyond.
A few months ago, we put out an alpha version of Kosmix.com. Many people used it and gave us valuable feedback; thank you! We listened, and made changes. Lots of changes. The result is the beta version of Kosmix.com, which we launched today. What’s changed? More information sources (many thousands), huge improvements in our relevance algorithms, a much-improved user interface, and a completely new homepage. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.
To those of you new to Kosmix, the easiest way to explain what Kosmix does is by analogy. Google and Yahoo are search engines; Kosmix is an explore engine. Search engines work really well if your goal is to find a specific piece of information — a train schedule, a company website, and so on. In other words, they are great at finding needles in the haystack. When you’re looking for a single fact, a single definitive web page, or the answer to a specific question, then the needle-in-haystack search engine model works really well. Where it breaks down is when the objective is to learn about, explore, or understand a broad topic. For example
– Looking to bake a chocolate cake? We have recipes, nutrition information, a dessert burn rate calculator, blog posts from chow.com, even a how-to video from Martha Stewart
– Loved one diagnosed with diabetes? Doctor-reviewed guide, blood sugar and insulin pump slide shows, calculators and risk checkers, quizzes, alternative medications, community
–Traveling to San Francisco? Maps, hotels, events, sports teams, attractions, travel blogs, trip plans, guidebooks, videos!
– Writing an article on Hillary Clinton? Bio, news, CNN videos, personal financial assets and lawmaker stats, Wonkette posts, even satire from The Onion.
– Into Radiohead? Bio, team members, albums, tracks, music player, concert schedule, videos, similar artists, news and gossip from TMZ.
– Follow the San Francisco 49ers? Players, news from Yahoo Sports and other sources, official NFL videos and team profiles, tickets, and the official NFL standings widget.
In the examples above, I’m especially pleased about the way Kosmix picks great niche sources for topics. For example, I hadn’t heard about chow.com or known that Martha Stewart has how-to videos on her website. Other “gems” of this kind include Jambase, TMZ, The Onion, DailyPlate, MamaHerb, and Wonkette. Part of the goal of Kosmix is to bring you such gems: information sources or sites you have either not heard of, or just not thought about in the current context.
In other words: Google = Search + Find. Kosmix = Explore + Browse. Browsing sometimes uncovers surprising connections that you might not even have thought about. The power of the model was brought home to me last week as I was traveling around in England. I’d heard a lot about Stonehenge and wanted to visit; so of course I went to the Kosmix topic page on Stonehenge. In addition to the usual comprehensive overview of Stonehenge, the topic page showed me places to stay in Bath, Somerset (which happens to be the best place to stay when you’re visiting Stonehenge). It also showed me other ancient monuments in the same area I could visit while I was there. Score one for serendipity.
Some of us remember the early days of the World Wide Web: the thrill of just browsing around, following links, and discovering new sites that surprise, entertain, and sometimes even inform. We have lost some of that joy now with our workmanlike use of search engines for precision-guided information finding. We built the new Kosmix homepage to capture some of the pleasure of aimless browsing — exploring for pure pleasure. The homepage shows you the hot news, topics, videos, slide shows, and gossip of the moment. If you find something interesting you can dive right in and start browsing around that topic. We compile this page in the same manner as our topic pages: by aggregating information for many other sources and then applying a healthy dose of algorithms. Dig in; who knows what surprises await?
How does Kosmix work its magic? As I wrote when we put out the alpha, the problem we’re solving is fundamentally different from search, and we’ve taken a fundamentally different approach. The web has evolved from a collection of documents that neatly fit in a search engine index to a collection of rich interactive applications. Applications such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Yelp. Instead of serving results from an index, Kosmix builds topic pages by querying these applications and assembling the results on-the-fly into a 2-dimensional grid. We have partnered with many of the services that appear in the results pages, and use publicly available APIs in other cases. The secret sauce is our algorithmic categorization technology. Given a topic, categorization tells us where the topic fits in a really big taxonomy, what the related topics are, and so on. In turn, other algorithms use this information to figure out the right set of information sources for a topic from among the thousands we know about. And then other algorithms figure out how to lay the information on the page in a 2-dimensional grid.
While we are proud of what we have built, we know there is still a long way to go. And we cannot do it without your feedback. So join the USS Kosmix on our maiden voyage. Our mission: to explore strange new topics; to discover surprising new connections; to boldly go where no search engine has gone before!
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
Become a fan on Facebook
Join us at FriendFeed
December 8th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Kudos to the Kosmix team for their continuing efforts to give the best and appropriate feedback sought! You guys are doing a great job; keep up the good work. I wish your team all success with the beta version of kosmix.com. I foresee a time, sooner than later, when kosmix will become a household name like google!
December 8th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
[...] The Official Kosmix Blog « Kosmix Adds Rocketfuel to Power Voyage of Exploration December 8, [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Hello
read abt kosmix being a challenge to google and am tremendously impressed….I am a search engine marketing person – account director – more specifically for performics, one of the leading search engine tech companies….I have always looked at the dominance of google and wondered what could take it on and kosmix seems to be the answer in some way…
I just wanted to know if you would consider paid advertising at some point..if yes, when do you think that would happen? am curious as I sell paid and natural search to clients in London and am always looking for the next best venture to work with….
December 9th, 2008 at 6:12 am
The last line of your post: “…to boldly go where no search engine has gone before!”
What about http://glue.yahoo.com/?
December 9th, 2008 at 9:15 am
[...] (like Kosmix’s brand colours) to learn that said new search ‘explore’ engine has secured a further $20m funding, led by Time Warner. Not bad in the current funding [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Hi, Anand:
I would like to invest in your venture, (a small investment).how can I do it.
regards
Shankar
December 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
hello
just found this Kosmix thing, and I am glad to announceyou that you are now in my search favourite box on FF.
I like the way you did this website and I am sure you will be a serioulsy success story!
it is Glue but in better!
enjoy
December 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Hey guys
Great work with Kosmix. I am quite impressed about how it collects information. I would like to see the following:
1. Logins/accounts for those who use Kosmix frequently
2. A method of promoting/demoting results (like the recent Google development)
3. A method of commenting, recommending, pointing out and sharing information (like in Feedly)
4. If a large number of people promote a result, you could make it a “top result” or something similar
5. Reorganizing parts of the webpage as per one’s preference (web 2 elements)
I noticed the following really nice things:
1. I spent more time reading a search/results page than searching from it with new search terms. A big improvement over other search engines/information collectors
2. Relevant results in audio and video as well, neatly organized
3. Books and stuff you can buy on online stores, also neatly organized.
Thanks for giving us this neat website! Looking forward to using Kosmix much more!
Bye
Rajesh
December 9th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Hi Anand
One of Google success is it’s simplicity of its front page and simple design of its result page.
Hope Kosmix comes up with simpler design of front page and only the required information on result page.
Thank you
Prakatheeh
December 9th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Hi Anand & Venky,
Great to hear about Kosmix. I am an internet marketer, resident in Singapore and I am open to investment. Let me know how I can contribute to the success of your company.
Wishing you the very best.
Satish
December 9th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I am extremely happy to know about your success.
Wishing you more successful lead.
Regards,
SAJI
December 9th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Hi Folks,
must say, have been impressed thus far with the premise of explore v/s search.
I just learnt about Kosmix today and am exploring
Good luck and keep exploring..
Venkat
December 9th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Fantastic news – congrats guys!
December 10th, 2008 at 1:27 am
My best wishes are with the Kosmix team. I would wait for the launch of the product. I hope your product really has the force to take on the BULL by the HORN – Google!
I am a marketing professional who is attempting to make many million bucks by promoting the brand that I work for on the web. Needless to say, Google is the best bet today and I wish there are better options available at cheaper costs. Aha! there goes the rider – ‘cheaper costs’. Kosmix, are you listening?
Cheers
Saurav
December 10th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Hi ,
Great to hear some fresh idea in search market that Kosmix has come up rather than walking the same repeatedly beaten track of “Search and find”. Kudos!!!!!
I am Pradeep , working in India . I am very interested to be part of Kosmix team. Is it possible to apply to Kosmix from here.
Thanks
Pradeep
December 10th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Well, just after a few search, that was resulting in only Google results, I posted in your another blog. But after searching more or EXPLORING more I’m now convinced with your work. I guess your indexing has to be increased and that’s just a matter of time. Good explorer I must say. As a search maniac I would love to contribute to you in future !!!
December 10th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Brian, have you compared Kosmix and Yahoo Glue side-by-side. I think you will find that Kosmix is far superior in its robustness, UI, and relevance
December 10th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
[...] is Kosmix, as described by its CEO. Take a moment to wander around iLetYou – I promise you’ll be surprised. Start with a [...]
December 10th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
@Chris: Yeah, I have. Kosmix is just a better-marketed aggregator. And really, relevance of the information presented on the topic pages has nothing to do with Kosmix; they have built it on top of other services API’s that provide the relevant content. It’s a bit ignorant to proclaim “go where no search engine has gone before!” by simply aggregating content from some popular Web 2.0 services and presenting it on a single page. It’s relying on others for its “smarts”. Kosmix’s claim to fame is its ability to relate topics, not content. The ability to relate topics is really not the big dilemma in the market today.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
@Brian: Yes, Kosmix does gather information from a variety of other services. The challenge is, we know about many thousands of these services; and we cannot call all of them for ever single query — that would make the people who run those services really unhappy! Our algorithms help us figure out sources for call for each query, and then how to lay out the resulting information.
See how each example query in the post above brings up information from very different sources. Imagine if we showed hotel listings for Hillary Clinton — that wouldn’t be very helpful.