Yesterday I spent 30 minutes trying to use cuil.com (I won't put in a hyperlink to save you the waste of time).
To call this overhyped is an understatement. Magic words were said about the capabilities of the founders and how much better search would be, but the experience was painful and unproductive. This is probably the biggest mismatch in promised to delivered user experience of anything I've seen on the net since the dot com bust.
It would take glowing reviews from people I trust to get me to visit the site again. A quick check of other blogs, emails and IMs indicates everyone had the same bad experience.
A fantastic example of how a hype machine whipped up millions in free advertising, but since it was only hype, the word quickly grew and the promotion turned into a huge negative campaign they couldn't control.
Even if they have some deep tech that works (and there are indications they don't), their investors should think about cutting their losses and bailing. The cost of attracting users back is going to be incredibly high.
first paperclips and now this...
Norway claims to have invented the paperclip - Jim is visiting the place and points out we need to remember the cheese slicer is also a norwegian innovation.
It is sad the claim on the paperclip isn't that solid. In WWII they were a symbol of independence in Nazi occupied Norway.
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