Hedir Review : Google vs Hedir

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_s_Patent_may_imitate_Hedir_s_idea , submitted Hedir Vs Google thread to digg, digg it friends.

Lets make the voice Louder, Hedir should get the credit for community review system.

Please support the post to reddit and other sources also.

AjiNIMC

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

Also the debate is on at WPM , http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=325675#325675 , please participate. We miss Adams here, he use to bring the real fire, Where is he? Can we contact him somehow?

AlphaWebDesigns · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:36 pm Post subject:

You GO, guy!

You're doing a great job defending Hedir detractors Smile

I read your debate at WPW and I'm impressed.

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

I always loved doing it, in last discussion we had Adam, Google Junky involved. I miss them in the discussion, hope they also join the debate some time. I believe that many come to know about Hedir due to this.

Cheddles · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:36 am Post subject:

This will probably make me very unpopular around Hedir, but I'm inclined to agree with Tubby at WPW. I love the idea of Hedir but right now I can't see any way that it will achieve the goal of having a community made up of anyone other than webmasters.

To reach critical mass and become a broadly popular directory with a thriving diverse community, Hedir needs to become a genuinely useful search engine for casual visitors. Right now it's not even close.

Tubby is right - the focus at Hedir is all wrong. If you look at the review threads for many sites, many of the comments and votes are based on the submitter/webmaster rather than the site itself. Think about it - Joe Public couldn't care less if the person who submitted a site was an arrogant git who never reviewed another site. All Joe Public cares about is whether he is presented with a list of useful sites when he visits Hedir.

Although the underlying mechanics may be different, we need to look very closely at Google's marketing philosophy to see how Hedir could work better. Google, from it's inception, has completely ignored and alienated webmasters. This is the core of their success as it is the entire reason that the public have trusted the search results.

Google isn't popular with webmasters because it looks after their interest, it's popular with webmasters because it is very widely used. It's widely used because it has always had a singular focus on good search results. Search engines that have allowed webmasters to influence the results have all withered and died because the search results were corrupted and therefore useless to the searcher.

Conversely, Hedir is small list of sites chosen by a limited number of webmasters. The scope for bias is huge and the range of potential sites is too small to be useful (due to the small submission/review community)

While some within the Hedir community try very hard to ensure that quality sites are included in the directory, the reality is that we struggle to get enough reviews happening to even get a clear decision on sites. As a result we have a stagnant directory full of old sites that haven't even been reviewed, much less "community approved". No wonder there is absolutely no interest in the directory among anyone not interested in getting their own site listed.

To reach critical mass, Hedir needs to do something with the current community to make the directory a useful information resource. I've made a few suggestions in various forums here at Hedir but I'm just a regular contributor and it's not my baby. Once the directory is useful, then we might be able too start attracting a wikipedia-like interest from the general public.

To maintain a directory that is relatively immune from rigging (as would happen the minute it was a popular information resource) the community needs to be very large and very active. Right now, a group of 10-15 webmasters could join Hedir and rewrite the entire directory - all within the rules of Hedir. In fact one person with multiple logins (and a lot of time) could probably do likewise.

Alternatively, we could continue to vigorously defend Hedir against all detractors and refuse to accept that there may be a better way of doing things.

Like I said, I love the idea of Hedir but we're unlikely to achieve that idea unless we change the way we do things.

Thoughts?

AlphaWebDesigns · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:49 am Post subject:

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

Cheddles, thanks for the participation.

We need to understand that Hedir will be better than others as it is not created but evolved. This is a secret of marketing that the product which is evolved is better than the one which is created. DMOZ was a created and is still the same and time will sweep it away. Google was introduced and then it is still evolving with feedbacks and team work.

Hedir is driven by the users, today we have major webmasters as they are supposedly early adopters for such a product and I put real searchers as Laggards.

In the next phase of Hedir we need to involve real users, real searchers. Google is the King as it is providing the right thing, simplest way to find the documents. Hedir will not be able to beat Google for it. There are many areas where Human I is required and Hedir can work in there.

I think Hedir needs to work on top of Google Results and early we discussed about it. Lets not get discourged by any thought.

One of all time favorite cartoons shows a king on horseback with his arm raised, brandishing a sword, about to lead his troops into battle. A fellow is standing next to him with his foot on a machine gun. The caption has the king saying, "I can't bother with a crazy salesman. I've got a battle to fight!". That cartoon illustrates the problems that entrepreneurs encounter in introducing products to the marketplace.

Lets make it better we have a good team, experienced webmasters who themselves are searchers too. So lets rock the industry with some great products. I LOVE HEDIR and ITS CONCEPT and BELIEVE THAT IT WILL BECOME A MUST FOR ALL.

All suggestions to make it better should be forwarded to the team.

Thanks,
AjiNIMC

Note: I am off for three days for a youth camp http://www.idealwebtools.com/blog/camps-finalcall/ , keep discussion I will join after three days.

Cheddles · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:42 am Post subject:

Google's immense popularity is testament to its widespread popularity. Whether or not it should be trusted is beside the point - people do trust it and they are unlikely to change their mind any time soon.

The more important question to answer is why do you and many others NOT trust Google and how can we avoid Hedir falling into the same trap?

Cheddles · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 11:50 am Post subject:

Sorry AjiNIMC, that last response was only to writergrrrl's post.

A very good analogy to Hedir is Open Source Software development. There, high-quality software is produced through the combined effort of a relatively diverse community. The software evolves with the community, eventually producing a product far superior to anything that can be written and debugged by a commercial software house.

That's the theory and it's what makes headlines with the successful projects like Linux, FreeBSD, Apache and Fetchmail.

What the headlines don't tell you is the number of projects that fail. Many of these projects deserve to fail on technical grounds. Many, however are technically wonderful ideas that fail because they are insufficiently developed to inspire the right people to join them. See this chapter from Eric Raymond's seminal open source article The Cathedral and the Bazaar for a more complete outline of what needs to happen before people will join a project.

While a large community is necessary to sustain Hedir, they need something plausible to join in the first place. Unlike open source software, Hedir requires two groups to join in order to be successful; contributers/reviewers and general searchers. While there is (obviously) enough within Hedir to attract a few of the former, there is no sign that the latter will have anything worth visiting any time soon.

For the true spark to happen and make Hedir a place that excites and attracts the general public, the existing community must move quickly to make it a valuable information resource. The current path moves so slowly that even when a category is full of properly community-reviewed sites, the list is stale and there are probably better sites out there (probably waiting in the "under review" list).

Evolution is a great way to develop and mature a project like Hedir but some serious heavy lifting has to happen first to get enough people on board to trigger the evolutionary phase. For Hedir, this point is when the categories have sufficient community-reviewed sites to be a useful information resource. Until then, evolution is just a pipe dream.

Right now Hedir is useful to webmasters but mainly fulfils a similar role to WPW - peer website review and critique. It provides nothing of value to anyone else.

Again - just my thoughts.

UncleNabob · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 104 4120 Hedir Points

If we look at where HEDIR has real value and build from there, maybe there's hope.

If we look at HEDIR becoming a great web directory on the scale of DMOZ or better, something's got to change.

Why did I submit sites to HEDIR? Why would I recommend others to do the same? It's for the review, not the listing! The only time HEDIR shows up in my logs is when a site is under review, not after it is listed.

Maybe it's the review process that HEDIR advertises. Maybe we have a banner that webmasters can display on their sites: "I got scrubbed clean by HEDIR" or "HEDIR survivor" or something... Who knows, HEDIR listing might be a factor in Google's ranking some day.

HEDIR better focus on what it's good at, not just what it wants to be.

Brett · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:49 am Post subject: *sigh*

Tweaked my interest, so i scanned through the post on WPW, and followed back here...

Was contemplating adding to the post on WPW, but closed the page... too much EGO involved there...

I completely disagree with any comment that HEDIR is solely for webmasters.... WTH... really, who else would submit a site to a directory?? are we not looking at something small and making a big issue about it?

Would like to believe that every site/search engine is unique in their own way.

I have been in the WEB industry for under a year now(still a baby and growing), and when i first started i came across HEDIR, honestly, possibly the best click i made at the time. Not only would it form a apart of my link building efforts, but as a newbie, i learnt more from the HEDIR community(baggerolli, ADAM, Francesco and Google Junky)of present situations, etc than on sites like WPW and even WMW - a newbie would use them as a source to catch up on the past events leading up to now(my 2 cents)...

The community here is open, friendly and help is there for anyone that needs it and asks for it, which keeps me coming back.

As anyone truly interested in marketing their site, and providing a site of quailty to the web, HEDIR would be the place.... reviewers with experience in design, coding, SEO, they are all here, and reviews are made for the sole purpose(in my opinion) for the "geniune" submitter to help improve the site, and correct any issues there might be, including suggestions on how to improve.
So personally, i would prefer searching in HEDIR once the directory is bigger, when the need comes to search a directory without using a SE.
With that point made, a directory is not in competition with an SE.

I don't like having to compare, it is like a parent trying to say which child they love more.

Improvements are always taken into consideration here at HEDIR, which anyone can suggest, so keep in mind, it's still a baby growing.

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

I must agree to some of the comments and if summarize it then it will be,

Hedir needs to do a very big thing, which is unique, large scale and real surfer/searcher oriented.
With the patent, Hedir should hardly care as we have a very unique concept, the community points, its not editors but the real users. Wisdom of crowd vs expert, I have explained this at WPW.
Hedir needs to introduce simplicity.

I am sure Hedir will grow to my expectation in the coming days. Hedir is guided by some great community people so it will grow every single moment.

Neocortex · Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 45 3023 Hedir Points

I agree that it's Hedir's idea, but i think that if you're going to fight with Google about who'se idea it was, you're going to lose. Why? Cause Google is bigger and has got more money, that's the way these things go now in this world.

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

Neocortex · Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 45 3023 Hedir Points

Posted it on my site's blog, www.manfred-knows.com.

The permanent link is at: http://www.manfred-knows.com/index.php?blog=1&title=google_to_copy_hed ir_s_idea&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I'm going to promote it to other blogs, too Wink