Eurekster: With Passive Collaboration, Who Needs Tagging?

One of the past firms that launched at PC Forum and was in attendance at this year’s event was Eurekster, a Web 2.0 search personalization company. This company debuted two years previous at the 2004 PC Forum. I sat down with CEO Steve Marder to get an update on what’s been happening lately with the company. Marder recounted how, in November 2005, his company introduced “Swickis,” which are community-powered search engines for personal and small-business websites. (Search + wicki = swicki.) He described that launch as a “self-service beta.” [Prior to PC Forum, I had actually taken advantage of that service and created a swicki for my own blog, which I set up and took live in about 15 minutes. You can see it at the right, complete with what’s called the “buzz cloud” within the widget itself.] In its announcement, Eurekster said publishers are invited to create their own swickis, free of charge, with the Eurekster SwickiBuilder here, and “can opt to share in the search-related advertising revenue, a feature that will be available soon.” Harder told me some 5000 blogs have signed up so far and set up a swicki.

Marder continued: “We operate on the ASP model. And it’s easy to integrate our look-and-feel into your site.” He said he and his co-founder, Grant Ryan, Ph.D., who is based in New Zealand, had previously cofounded another technology company, which was focused in enterprise search. That firm is SLI Systems, which Marder said is profitable, and both he and Ryan continue to serve on that firm’s board.

“Eurekster is all about the end user,” said Marder. “Our engine learns from your community. We enable personal networks.”

But, in addition to targeting “the rest of the Web,” as Marder put it, with the swicki concept (meaning the smaller sites), Eurekster also has an offering called SearchPublisher, which is an enterprise-level platform for delivering a highly customized, branded search feature on large web sites. Customers include such companies as Bolt, Gartner, Friendster, Hollywood.com, Community Connect, and Locker Gnome. Eurekster also announced, on the first of day of PC Forum, that Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology magazine, had integrated Eurekster’s SearchPublisher community search platform into its website, PopSci.com. That site is a destination for readers interested in the latest developments in science and technology, including cars, electronics, communications, tools, space and aviation, among other topics.

“We allow passive collaboration, with no tagging. It’s the concept of ‘auto-tagging’,” said Marder. “Your users are communicating with you via search.” He said Eurekster gives the publisher control. “Small or large, they have community. We harness the collective intelligence of that community, while leveraging the expertise of the publisher.”

Eurekster is a privately held firm based in San Francisco and currently has 20 employees, with R&D based in New Zealand. It received angel backing in December 2004. What’s on tap for the company? Marder had this heads-up for me: “Monetization is coming next.”