Google dominates search. Sure, there’s a thing called Bing and a few other choices out there, but everything ends up being the blue and purple link thing curated mostly by machines.
In an effort to experiment with a different approach, we recently led an AngelList syndicated investment in one potential search challenger, a Kansas City based startup called Leap.it who is taking a different approach based on the belief that machine-based algorithms can only get you so far. They hypothesize that by injecting social and real-time data, along with interactions with real people, your search results become much better.
When you first visit Leap.it you will immediately notice that they completely do away with search lists. Instead, their search results are presented in cards that include web, video, social, and image previews.
What I find most compelling are Leap.it Perspectives. With Leap.it, anyone can collect, collaborate, and share results on any subject and then have them show in future, related search results. I have a few of my own Perspectives that highlight my background:
If you find something missing from any of these different perspectives, you can add to the perspective once you’ve logged in.
Fundamentally, Leap.it is trying to integrate the notion of search directly with the real-time web and the extended social network faciliated by services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Give it a try, create a perspective, and tell me what you think of it.