Otavo - Stop searching and start questing » MATEOSQUARED’S iSEARCH

I had mentioned Otavo in a previous posting as one of the next disruptors of Internet search. That may be a little misleading since Otavo is not really a search engine. At least not in the way we are accustomed to. It is actually a community of seekers, “questers” or whatever you want to call people looking for stuff online. Sounds like fun, but if you are really in a hurry when looking for a pumpkin pie recipe, you may want to go somewhere else.

Otavo is homey and has a very comfortable feeling, it is not edgy or flashy like a lot of sites. I think that is cool. It is a place where you can make more online friends, and commune with others. Who isn’t doing this? What if I have all of the friends I want in the real world, and I just want answers? Will not my LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Del.icio.us, and Yahoo! friends get jealous if I am off galavanting around with another social network? Why can’t they sell this as a group of people with a goal of finding quality information, instead of this whole I’m lonely and need online friends.

Otavo is a cool concept, but really needs to scale if it is going to provide relevant information. Besides asking questions on Otavo, you can also have “Quests” that deal with getting your life organized, as well as Quests for achievement. Why not just put your goals on a piece of paper or your PDA? Google Docs is available. OK idea, but I don’t want to share that kind of information with my “online” friends.

Ultimately I just can’t get excited about another social site that doesn’t really provide real value, and takes a lot of effort to get going with little return.