It's an interesting mission to improve web browsing. Especially on mobile devices. And you want to make it right, so congrats for that :) You guys wanna do what Mailbox did with emails or Citymapper with Transports right?
I just have two questions:
- Search results are different from Google, is it because you're indexing the content? Are you using microdata to improve the search experience?
- You're offering a premium experience of web browsing. Have you thought about making Wildcard a paying app? If yes, why haven't you? :) Just curious.
Thank you @jordancooper, @maxbulger :) And BTW, trending searches is just a GREAT feature.
Hey Laurent, thanks for the questions. 1) We built card search from the ground up. It's not based on Google...we think card search is a different problem than web search...we know card search is in a pretty young place at the moment, but usage is going to help a lot..stick with us and it will get great. 2) premium yes, charing no..Wildcard will always be free to consumers 3) check out my blog...lots on vision over there: http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/
Thanks for spending time digging in.
Jordan
Swing.js creator would be. Though, thank you @hopkinschris for getting it out there. It has certainly got a lot of attention. Over 1000 stars on Github this week https://github.com/gajus/swing.
Just tried a few searches on Wildcard, and it feels a lot more like a mobile-card search engine than a web browser. It's not possible to go to any URL, so I'm curious to know why it's positioned as a browser versus mobile-friendly search.
@bthdonohue well...i think first time around, browser and search engine were two distinct things, but overtime they have sort of merged into one at least from a user standpoint...you can navigate to specific brands or even cards without searching...check out directory at the bottom, or tap any icon you see in a card to get a feel...we're gonna have to do a ton of work on navigation in the app, and search is definitely going to be the most prominent way to get around, but I don't think search alone captures the idea of providing access to every card in the world...search feels like a layer of value on top of the fundamental promise/effort
@bthdonohue Thanks Brian-- valid question. EDIT: JC beat me to it :). My thoughts aren't as concise...
Couple reasons:
-Thanks to Google + Chrome, I think the browser and search have combined into a single product for most users. The average person doesn't know what the omnibar is-- they just open a Chrome or Safari window, type some stuff in, and navigate the web (which, on a mobile device, is slow and painful). So we view browser + search as inseparable from the end-user's perspective.
-In our vision of the "card internet" (where we could interact with internet content primarily through cards and native apps, rarely touching the legacy web), cards are addressble via URI. In the future, as more people start creating cards and our index grows, you'll be able to navigate more freely outside of search (feel free to publish some cards and get 'em in our app today! http://www.trywildcard.com/dev). That being said, I don't think the URL is a user-friendly feature. Hope navigation moves away from opaque address strings and towards interactive cards backed by (invisible to the end user) URI's.
Our hope for this thing is really that everyone can publish in this format, and app dev's can render this format, and we can render cards cross-app and navigate between them with deeplinks. Our browser is one discovery-focused "card client," but the possibilities for other use cases are pretty endless.
Hi Jorday, Max (don't know how to put your a upside/down) great product ! I but I can't find in in the US app store is it down ?
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Kudos guys! I'm old enough to remember the first time I did a Google search versus my Excite and Alta Vista days. When I clicked, Wow! Immediately I was hooked even though the world told them it was a loser because nobody ever made money on search. When I played with your cards, I had another Wow! for a complete different reason unrelated to search. Huge specific potential down narrative, education, quotes, the written word, and niche product discovery like a Ticktail app in card form, not necessarily search. Keep grinding!
@bramk Hey Bram! Unfortunately, content laws differ significantly by country, and getting localization really right takes time (especially for a small team :) ). We're working on it, coming soon!
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