Comments on: Y Combinator Challenge #16 – A form of search that depends on design

By: RL

RL — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:28:47 +0000

What about making this organizational specific? For example an University of Michigan (Go Blue!)
or Seattle Public Schools, and have alumni, students and others use the search engine to raise money to help build a new building (brick by brick) a.k.a. a startup a week) or a new computer lab, etc. It would sort be like using a organizational sponsored credit card in which every time an alumni uses their card with the school colors on it, the credit card company gives some of profits to organization. That way users could use the search site to support the cause or non profit that they are most interested in.

By: Franz

Franz — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:09:29 +0000

try http://www.facesaerch.com/facesearch/?q=http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/feed/ for a similar flow expirience

By: astartupaday

astartupaday — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:19:11 +0000

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the link – that’s definitely an interesting concept, although I would argue that while non-profits don’t care about design, users do. The intent of my idea isn’t so much around raising the money for a non-profit, but more about providing a “Google + 1″ that still provided the same end results, but was different enough that a percentage of users would be willing to switch to Search4Change to be their default start page.

By: chris m.

chris m. — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:25:42 +0000

This is what FreeCause does.

http://freecause.com/

The non-profit orgs don’t care as much about design as they do about rev share from search queries, integration into existing databases, and list-building tools built into the toolbars that drive constituents back to the organization’s homepage.