Topsy

My friend Rishab’s company, Topsy Labs, Inc., received the accolade of recognition by none other than the WSJ. See, http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/05/27/topsy-bets-on-real-time-twitter-search-with-15m-backing/

What is Topsy? I like the homepage description: “A search engine powered by tweets,” and its About page states,

“Topsy is a new kind of search engine, with a new way of looking at the Internet. Topsy doesn't think the Internet is a collection of documents. Or even a web of documents. Topsy sees the Internet as a stream of conversations. Topsy treats people differently from the webpages they create and the things they say. And Topsy sees that people in every community are connected in a web of relationships, where each person influences other people to read, talk and think about things.

“Topsy listens to the conversations taking place all the time on the living, social web. This is the rapidly growing, exciting world of Twitter, Blogs, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, Identica and many other communities. People use these communities to share reviews, opinions, messages, comments and discussions about things. Topsy indexes those things. Topsy indexes what people are talking about.

“Because of how Topsy works, Topsy can do things other search engines don't usually do. Topsy results are fresh, because they're based on what you're talking about right now. Or this week. Or the past month. Topsy has "trackback" pages for everything in its index, showing what everyone is saying about that thing. Conversations are about people, and Topsy has pages for every person it listens to - listing the things you've been talking about.”

Google tracks blogs but not comments and it does not, far as I know, track tweets. I’m sure it will. But for now, as the the zeitgeist is increasingly carried by tweets (sigh...), not to surf this wave is to come close to sinking in a sea of sharks. Oh, I doubt Google will disappear and expect it to evolve, to grow ever larger, and to do this fast. But I also have to wonder if it’s losing its agility, if it’s not increasingly beholden to legacy mechanisms of revenue generation. Sure, it’s famous for experimenting and issuing novelty items not enough people liked. (Though I confess I rather liked many.) it tries to be different from itself, to stay young. But it’s not about to sacrifice, and it can’t, the machine that’s made it so rich. Meanwhile, there is now Topsy. And it’s fun.