Blekko: On A Mission To Improve The Search Experience

Rich Skrenta, in his quest to deliver differentiated search experience for web users, has launched a suite of three products, namely,

•    Blekko, the search engine
•    izik, a mobile  application
•    and ROCKZi, a social news platform

All of the above have one thing in common. They are powered by Blekko’s proprietary technology.

So, let us try to find out what is so special about this technology.

Many were finding the traditional search engines lack luster. Type in keywords and in an instant you are delivered with millions of advices – most of them irrational or irrelevant to your search.

Even the list of “blue links” was not proving helpful, as users had to sift through these to find the relevant answer to their query.

Now, people want the best results in the least amount of time. The demand for an alternative search engine for discovery was on, and luckily, Blekko provided the answer.

This new search train is breaking down search queries into categories that offer links to curated results from their own dedicated semantic database. 

The keyword here is human curation. Actual humans are editing search results and employing slashtags for easy categorization.

What has been the offshoot of all this?

It has managed to eliminate spam and content farms from search results.

Blekko, izik and ROCKZi - all of these three products are promising a pleasurable search. However, whether it will be possible for this new search horse to compete with the giant Google remains to be seen.

Blekko is an innovative search engine creating a differentiated search experience for users by delivering high-quality, curated results and organizing content into categories.

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Blekko Going Strong with its Innovative Social Content Curation Site

Blekko’s innovative ways for search seem to be catching up with users.

ROCKZi, launched by Blekko in July 2012, is a visually forceful way to network with fresh content. Just select from the many categories, including sports, medicine, or movies, and get displays on your computer or mobiles, a grid view of items of your choice. All you need to do is, “Read. Vote. Rock”.

Many of us may think what is so special about ROCKZi. After all, Facebook and Twitter already work in a similar fashion.

This new search engine has the answer 

ROCKZi is potentially a way to discover high-quality content on an increasingly cluttered web.

The driving force for Rich Skrenta is curation. The idea is to allow people to curate.

This concept is an extension of allowing search of top-quality content in vertical categories called slashtags. By making slashtags as the cornerstone of ROCKZi as well, Blekko engineers have made an innovation by providing it as a feed.

Easy to navigate

“It is even less complex than a slashtag,” says a user. “You simply select the category you are interested in.”
                                                                                             

One glance and the concept appears good. The layout is easy to read and navigate. All you have to do to read the full content is tap on the article’s image to expand the snippet. 

Now ROCKZi application can also be downloaded on mobiles, making it a breeze to read constantly updated content on the go.

Some may say ROCKZi is an amalgam of Pinterest and Flipboard, but the going seems to be good.

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