Aug 05
Me.dium Social Search - Refreshingly original
Let me first state: I did this review not because many have heard about Me.dium’s search engine - but because one of the people behind it wrote a comment on my blog earlier today and requested I took a look at it - and so I did!
After having just reviewed Cuil, the alleged competitor to Google, it’s quite an uplifting feeling to go to http://me.dium.com/search. At the very least, here is a search engine that can actually claim originality. Not that we haven’t seen popularity search engines before, but never in this way.
When you go to me.dium, you are met with your typical search bar and two buttons: Search and I’m feeling social. Also on the page is a list of search strings just typed in by other users. Now for a security guy like myself I’m a bit reluctant to call the “suggestion list” a good idea. Theoretically it’s a good idea because it can give people interesting things to read. I myself found out Bernie Mac apparently almost died recently. On the other hand the list could potentially be a bit damaging if users start typing in personal information like their e-mail address, name, address and so on. It’s a well-known fact that many try to “google” themselves to see how much information is publicly available on them - doing the same thing here might actually lead you into more trouble than you were before you did the search. However it largely depends on the algorithms set into place to control that list and if it’s handled properly it shouldn’t be a problem.
When it comes to the actual standard searching, me.dium does a fairly good job actually. There’s nothing really revolutionary about it, but it does what it’s supposed to and I got way more results than I did on Cuil (however not anywhere near what I get on Google.. but me.dium is still only released as an alpha version so what can you expect really?). The I’m feeling social feature is also quite interesting as it displays what other users like - thereby sorting out a lot more spam- and/or irrelevant sites so that you get a more precise and relevant search. I must say I really like that feature!
Now for the layout. Well, I like the colors and I like the graphics. But what I don’t like is the blatant Google rip-off. I’m feeling social is a very cool feature, but as for the name anyone can see it’s a complete rip-off of Google’s I’m feeling lucky. I would have liked a bit more originality here! The same goes for the search results, which also look way to much like Google’s - actually so much that I would fear a lawsuit had I been from me.dium.com.
So all in all I like Me.dium Social Search soo much better than Cuil and I really think it has some new and cool features. I don’t believe it’s a realistic competitor to Google, as it doesn’t support many of the cool features Google does (define, site, image searching, calculator, currency converter etc.) and I’m a bit afraid Me.dium Social Search can’t handle the pressure of 60.000.000 unique users pr. hour or whatever Google actually handles (probably a lot more) and of course - Me.dium needs to index more sites. That being said, it’s not unrealistic that Me.dium Social Search, given time, could potentially be a competitor to Google - So my advice to the dium.com people: Be original, stay original, increase power and ease of use and just expand with servers and new indexed pages - maybe in 5-10 years people will be using your search engine!
I recently tried out the “new” search engine Cuil which supposedly was the new up and coming competitor to Google. Now, I really went into this with an open mind and thought: “Hey, if they claim to be better than Google, they probably have even better features that make my searching and related tasks easier” — well, I was wrong!