KGB.com - no irony

KGB.com: ironically, a project that wants to control information

I picked this up from Google trends this morning.  ‘KGB.com‘.  I’m not sure what it’s trying to be (it really isn’t obvious).  It appears to critique the traditional search process (effectively the ‘disorganisedness’ of Google search findings).

It seems to want to offer people a way to contextualise what they find.  By putting in their space.  Right.

A space that you immediately notice is AdSense populated.

Is it a search engine?

No it is not. At kgb.com, our goal is allow you to find what information you need right on our site, rather than just direct you to other locations on the web as a normal search engine would.

Of course, they use search engines to bring this information to your space in their world.  If KGB.com is trying to give people tools to manage chaotic online information, then what are they?  My initial review didn’t detect what those tools might be.  From my initial review, KGB ends up looking like yet another walled information community (like AOL was, Facebook IS…) that can be - rather uninspiringly - capitalised with Google ads.

What’s your view?

It says you can ask it any question and get an answer.  Ok.  Here are a couple: what was the KGB in the Soviet Union and how did it control information?

January 7, 2009 | Filed Under what do you think? 

Comments

2 Responses to “KGB.com - no irony”

  1. anon on January 19th, 2009 10:19 pm

    kgb_ is a company based largely on the work of independent contractors who provide answers to questions that their askers don’t have the immediate time or resources to find. (Say, they’re out of the house, and don’t have access to the internet.) They text kgb_ with a question, for a $0.50 charge, and get it answered accurately in a short period of time.

    The KGB of the Soviet Union were the security force dating back to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, before they were even known as the ‘Committee of State Security’.

    The KGB of the Soviet Union controlled information because it controlled most other aspects of the country, often by force.

    kgb_ may not get to be as big or pervasive as google, but they do offer an innovative service that provides a more personalized human touch to answering questions than google does.

    The premise is basically paying somebody else to look up small facts for you, when you cannot.

  2. Sam Deeks on January 19th, 2009 11:45 pm

    Thanks for the answers, Anon. I now understand the Text service you offer:

    “The premise is basically paying somebody else to look up small facts for you, when you cannot.”

    I still can’t see how you’ve “re-imagined the way you find, create and share information on the web”. All I’ve found is smaller and smaller bits of information and more and more advertising.

    I gave up looking.

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