JetEye's David Hayden Talks on the Magellan Days and His Vision for Social Search
David Hayden is a member of who I consider to be the old school search crew - the guys you read about in chapter 3 of Battelle's the Search (Search Before Google). As Chairman, President and CEO he helped grow the web search engine Magellan into an $18 million dollar aquisition for Exite in 1996 at "the very inception of the commercial internet."

His new operation, JetEye, falls into the significant and important emerging social search space with the likes of PreFound and to some extent Yahoo's delicious. These are the companies seeking to enable users to determine their own relevance, though it certainly remains to be shown if there are truly mainstream applications for social search data - and the biggest social player, MySpace, has yet to pick a search direction.

I had the honor of interviewing David Hayden on his new project and came away impressed with both his vision for a possible future of search and his willingness to clearly detail what he sees as JetEye's competitive landscape - Google Notebook and Yahoo's delicious.

I think this is a fantastic interview from Hayden - it's a pleasure to read for his insight and construction of position and leaves me with many more questions. Watch for more from Hayden here :)

What was your personal role in Magellan?
I was one of four co-founders and I served as Chairman, President and CEO from inception until July of 1996, when we sold the company to Excite.

What was your greatest success at Magellan?
There were several of equal importance, I think.

First, this was my first foray into the world of technology, so growing the company to over 100 employees and positioning it for an IPO were personal successes, including the rewards to our investors that went along with this.

Second, it’s hard to remember this, but Magellan and just a handful of other companies (Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek and Excite) really invented the concept of modern search engines as we know them today, and we all created new crawler and index technology to do this – and at a time when everyone thought the browser was the king of the land.

Finally, meeting people still today, who remember Magellan, used it, loved it – so the enduring impact, though small, of what was a very cool product, reminds of what a cool and great company we created, during the very inception of the commercial Internet.

What in your work at Magellan prepared you for the challenges at Jeteye?
I think it was the unfinished exploration of how search needs to relate directly to the mind of the user, that prepared me, or rather compelled me, to explore search and collaboration in the context of Jeteye.

Steve Mansfield at PreFound thinks that social search can scale to mainstream search. Do you see your work at Jeteye as work towards a replacement to mainstream search?
In the following way, yes: I would define mainstream search as simple algorithmic information retrieval, and include Google in this group.

I would define social search along the lines of the Forrester Group in their publications about ‘social computing’ – meaning, the web today empowers us to do many things almost at once, including collaboration, instant communication, broad and narrow search, video casting, self publishing, etc.

These are all features of the ‘social’ environment that the web has become, and likewise, they are all features or aspects of what Jeteye let’s you do, which is: pull anything together that interests you, and use that to find more information, more people of similar interests, more knowledge.

So in a word, social search will be mainstream, because it represents the pursuit of knowledge over information, and the pursuit of knowledge must be a mainstream activity.

If not, then why are you creating Jeteye?
Exactly. We are creating Jeteye to handle the world of social search – which we believe includes the ‘new’ elements of the individual doing some level of “creating” and “publishing” as part of the search paradigm, as part of the searching process, to improve the quality of results, the experience, and ultimately improve the level of knowledge both found and shared.

Please respond to the delicious-doesn't-incent-with-cash argument. Why are you offering cash (if you still are of course)?
If you’re referring to the ‘contest’ we held at launch – well, that was just for fun really. A gimmick, yes, a way to get attention at the beginning, yes. Was it a good idea, I don’t know – but we don’t incent with cash.

Many people (Jim Lanzone) characterize searchers as lazy and think that social search won't work. Considering your background in search at Magellan, why did you decide to get involved in a search-related CMS that relies on people working so hard?
Well, I don’t believe people are lazy for starters. And I don’t believe that we aren’t creative. I basically think that we can converge the fun and easy with the profound and meaningful. That’s our established goal at Jeteye.

How many users?
In two months, just over 10,000, with an accelerating curve that points us to over 100,000 users fairly soon.

How many total jetpaks?
In the same period, over 30,000.

How many jetpaks are spams? Talk about spam in Jeteye.
So far none are really spams – there are some not-so-interesting Jetpaks for sure – about 5% in fact, but the concept of Jeteye and what you call the ‘work’ to use it are interesting here: the idea is that you are creating a Jetpak for yourself first, for anyone else, usually second.

This improves the very way in which you think about the web, and search it. Jeteye in a very real way raises the bar of interaction with the web. The other concept behind Jeteye is that it is really kind of a nex-gen communication platform, in fact, eventually a better way than email for sending around text and images to people.

In that, Jeteye is designed to send you to the Jetpak, rather than the Jetpak to you – this is a much more efficient way to use the web, obviously.

Help me understand the Jeteye business model.
Jeteye has an enterprise model where a business (let’s take the travel industry for example) will license the Jeteye app, and we will securely host the app and the content of that business created by use of the app, for a fee.

In travel, imagine the customer support or marketing group easily creating visual travel packages in Jetpaks for their members, sending them out, having the members interact with them, vote on trips, even send photos of their trips back in Jetpaks, all around a specific package that was created by the travel company.

This is compelling to businesses – the ability to capture and use their customer-created information, for the benefit of their customers, which of course is the only thing that really benefits a business.

Help me understand how Google Notebook is or isn't a competitor.
Notebook is a competitor.

It could end up being similar to Jeteye if they want, but they have some real hurdles between what they are doing and what we are doing.

I’ll mention a few: sharing is very different, the use of Notebook as a communication tool, is very different, and the idea that Notebook goes beyond the boundaries of Google is not a very clear message.

Jeteye is all about sharing privately or publicly, it’s very much a communication tool, and we have built something with the established goal of bridging links between all search and social network platforms – meaning, we’ve created something that is ultimately just for the individual.

Who do you see as your competition?
I have always liked to think about partners more than competitors, because the web develops too quickly to worry about who is doing something like what you’re doing; but ultimately we do have some competitors, and worthy ones at that, like Kaboodle, Onfolio, Squidoo, even del.icio.us.

(note to JetEye's competition - I would like to understand your differentiation from JetEye -email me selowdown@gmail.com)

Will text ads work in Jeteye?
Yes, anything works in Jeteye – even videos hosted elsewhere will play in a Jetpak.

Will ads on Jeteye be more or less valuable than ads on, say, Google. Why?
We think Jeteye ads will be even more valuable, because we have the technology to really target the ad to a more complete package of thought and information (the Jetpak!)

What do you think of the new CPA craze? (Snap, Jellyfish, Google's experiments, Zixxo to some extent)?
Nice idea but still the same problem of tracking, gaming, validating – but I do like the direction it poses: advertisers get paid the closer a user’s transaction is to the advertisement they’ve seen

Would a CPA model work better on Jeteye than PPC? Why or why not?
The best model in Jeteye will be when a user delivers the advertisement to someone in their network, because that person wants it.

In that model, call it the PPDA (price per ‘delivered’ advertisement), the messenger and the message creator and the recipient of the message all benefit.

Who's funding Jeteye now, and why?
We’re primarily funded by Consor Capital, Palo Alto Investors, and Knott Capital. It’s fair to say they all believe that search and communication are going through some major changes in the next few years, and they like our approach and believe in me.

(I added links to venture firms - G)

Who have they funded that have seen profitability?
A host of companies, that I won’t list here, but will get you separately.

Talk about the importance of Yahoo to your growth strategy.
Yahoo is a great partner for such a small start-up. We have created a very neat plug-in of Jeteye into their new IM platform, which is good for both of us. Helps us with our goal of integrating Jeteye into various communication modules, and helps them with their goal of making IM more comprehensive. All of this is good for growth for us.

Your CFO used to be a head of business development - is this a coincidence or is business development key to Jeteye's growth strategy?
I think you’ve answered the question ;-) -- partnerships are key to our growth strategy.

Why don't any of the Jeteye profile pages have pictures? are you deliberately trying NOT to look like a social network?
Well, we’re really not a social network, at least in the MySpace, Tagworld sense of social network – and we’ll be adding visual icons soon, and that includes pictures of people of course – we think the visual element of Jeteye (actually, part of the name is visual by intent) is very important – we just have a different timeline for releasing these elements.

What social network would make the best Jeteye partner? Why?
LinkedIn. It’s a social network with a purpose, and Jeteye is all about applying the application to your needs, for a meaningful experience and purpose.

Do you think you'd see more success as a vertically-oriented social-bookmarking site? Why or why not?
I think that would be too limiting for what we’ve built and what our vision for the evolution of the web is about.

If you HAD to pick a vertical or coverage area for Jeteye which one would you target?
Travel.

Who appears to be your strongest demographic?
Really hard to say at this point – we’re still pretty broadly represented today.

Why a desktop download? Why not web based?
That’s a great question, and the key to Jeteye. We’re about unlocking and releasing anyone who uses Jeteye from specific web sites or being able to only work online – the future of Jeteye as a communication app lies in your ability to really use it and love it online or offline, wherever you go, wherever you are.

That’s why it has to be an ‘independent’ app.

Thanks to:
Jasmine Chng of the Digital Influence Group for reaching out.

coverage that helped me form questions:
Bambi Francisco interviews David Hayden (video)
Jeteye (PC Mag Review)
Yahoo! Announces new Messenger with Jeteye Plug-in
Not So Jazzed by Google Notebook? Try JetEye
Share Your Search Results with Jeteye
Jeteye: social search
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |