Start-up Tagfetch lets you search tags
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We're not sure whether we'll ever need to use it, given the plethora of other search sites out there, but companies might use it to search and track their brands.
Its home page (partial screen shot below) is spartan, like Google's. You can choose whether to search news, blogs, bookmarks or media. The results it pulls up are those pages of blogs or other public sources where your search term has been tagged.
It looks pretty thin right now, but it is early days for the company, which says it hasn't launched an official version. There other players out there that do "meta" searches for things people have tagged or selected to share via "favorites." There's Wink, and Gada.be, for example.
Sang Noh, a founder, said the company will launch an official testing (beta) version in about two or three weeks.
As for competitors, Gada.be seems to focus on the quantity of the sources searched (200 sources), and seeks to help categorize the sources you search (you can search "Amazon", or a more vaguely, a "geeky" category, for example). Wink relies gives you search results that users have bookmarked, and if it can't find anything bookmarked, it backfills with Google results.
TagFetch is focused on fetching user generated content from popular/quality sources, Noh said. He's working on a bunch of new features, including improving the ability to" track" searches. The start-up has received a modest amount of angel funding, he said.
Steve Rubel mentions Tagfetch here, saying it is good for companies to track their brands, though criticizes it for not being an open platform, where people can develop their own uses for it. More also from Lifehacker.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/1458
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Tracked: August 13, 2006 6:05 AM
This isn't completely new, rel8r has been around for a long time:
Zetterdawg on June 20, 2006 9:21 AMComment link
http://gada.be/o/siliconbeat/opml
Beat that. ;)
http://gada.be/a/siliconbeat/opml
Or that. ;)
Chris Pirillo on June 20, 2006 11:17 PMComment link
Could you please qualify the words 'startup' and 'business'? This is not a business, it is an idea. Businesses have revenue models and potential markets- this has neither. It is a subset of a subset: Search>Tagging>Delicio.us>this.
Why not catalog all the 2.0 ideas and define whether they fit these simple criteria for being considered potential businesses: A way to earn money (not VC or Google acquisition money, revenue from paying customers) and are there people beyond the 54,000 who would actually pay money for their product or service?
We're in lalaland here folks.
Comment link
MartinE,
TagFetch is an idea, it is a consumer internet product and it is a startup. I didn't share my business plan or revenue forcasts with Matt and I don't intend to. The fact of the matter is every business has a starting point and we just happen to be at the starting point right now. It is unfortunate that you don't share the same vision as me in terms of the product but I assure you that indeed TagFetch is a real business. Oh and by the way, Coca-Cola is a subset of grocery>beverage>carbonated drinks... I Coca-Cola still qualifies as a product and a business. One more thing, If we could build a product that serves 54000 people whats wrong with that? Is there a threshold for customers that qualifies us as a business? If so they didn't teach me that at school.
Sang Noh on June 21, 2006 3:03 PMComment link
The 54000 number came from recent estimates of how many people actually know or care anything about web 2.0. It is based on TechCrunch readership. The point is that you may find it very difficult to move beyond this very limited universe. It is easy for those of you in the Valley to lose touch with how the rest of the world perceives these business ideas. For example, I run a sales group for a SaaS company. Our web 2.0 competitors are companies like Zimbra, Joyent and Foldera, all of which have received a lot of press in blogs like SB. We are currently calling 48,000 businesses a week to talk to them about email and collaboration. Not one has ever mentioned these companies. They are simply not aware of them. Given that we are selling a product whose market is virtually any business, I think I understand something about what the market might be for a tag search engine. I'll be very interested to see how your business model works out- my post was not intended to insult you personally. It was a wider comment on the lack of reality in some of these businesses covered here. I sincerely hope I am wrong and you have great success.
MartinE on June 22, 2006 6:28 AMComment link
