Clusty, a metasearch engine that clusters results into folders, is under new ownership (though you wouldn’t know it from the website). Vivisimo, which developed Clusty as a showcase for its technology for automatically categorizing results, has sold it to Yippy.
Yippy is a happy looking, kid-appealing portal-styled place which asks you to register to use its wares.
From Yippy Acquires Clutsy new release – ” Yippy, formerly known as Cinnabar Ventures, Inc., is a Fort Myers, Fla.-based company that develops technologies and application services environments for both consumer and commercial market segments in the cloud computing sector.”
Not much to go by.
Yippy describes itself as ” the world’s first fully-functioning virtual computer that operates on a cloud-based worldwide LAN. Yippy is simply hardware mated to dynamic software set through a worldwide LAN using a virtual, ubiquitously connected web-based operating system. Tapping into the Yippy OS means virtually any computer, whether it is a PDA, notebook or desktop, can be accessed as if from a computer terminal. ” [From FAQ]
Highly technical language for a site designed to appeal to the under-12 crowd.
Future – “During the course of 2010, Yippy will present its web-based OS to include social networking, full user interaction, customization, Microsoft Office-type applications including word processing and spreadsheet programs (i.e., Yippy users will be able to open a spreadsheet program through Yippy, create a document online, and save it to their Yippy storage bucket), tabbed browsing, customizable icons for favorites, web sharing and much more.”
This will be a download that parents can install to create a controlled environment where even (it is stated in the FAQ) Google can be blocked. (And Bing and Ask are safer and better?)
For now, the web Yippy provides a range of tools for the signed-in member – email, conferencing and chat, news, games, favorites / bookmarks. There is also Tools – which includes classified ads. It also blocks 4.8 million sites. If Yippy really wants to be a safe place, it should provide directory of hand-picked sites approved for children.
The passerby can use the web search component without being a member. Results, however, show inside the Yippy frame making it less useful for the searcher.
Lets hope that Clusty.com continues at the clusty.com domain for searchers to use because going through Yippy is not an attractive option. The worry is that Vivisimo will no longer have an interest in improving the technology to demonstrate the capabilities of its enterprise search products.
What are the chances of success? Controlled communities don’t have a wide appeal – ask AOL. Yippy will have no interest in meta-search technology. Vivismo has left the public web search space. All round – I don’t think the signs are good.
Added: Vivisimo sells Clusty for $5.6 million, Pittsburg Business Times (May 17)
Yippy plans to increase use of Clusty – “Under Vivisimo the search product had limited use, Granville said, but he intends to kick it up to 3.3 million users in the next 18 months, or one percent of the U.S. search market.”. I presume that is the anticipated growth of the Yippy community.
A telling statement – ““In a time with Google under fire, we intend to use those business practices against them as a company to drive conservative, right-of-center eyeballs to our environment,” Granville (CEO) said.
