I spoke with a new site in local, Boorah, yesterday. They’re presenting at DEMO and they officially launch tonight/tomorrow.
The idea is to aggregate local reviews (right now in the restaurant vertical) from multiple sites and create a more complete user experience. They then build what they say is a better search experience on top of that content, as well as other features.
I haven’t been able to use the site because it’s not live yet. But I’m intrigued and quite eager to do so.
January 30, 2007 at 5:38 pm
This was almost too easy: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:boorah.com
Click on ‘cache’ and enjoy
January 30, 2007 at 5:45 pm
[...] in point: I read about a local aggregator called Boorah launching. I clicked on to their site and saw a coming soon page. Incidentally they had PageRank. Which can [...]
January 30, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Thanks for the post, Greg. We’ll post a comment here when the new site’s live, which will be later today.
And yes, you can still see the caches of our old, Alpha site!
January 31, 2007 at 12:03 am
I, too, am intrigued and exited to see what Boorah puts out. What I don’t get is how they and OpenList do what they do….legally. I mean, they’re essentially pilfering reviews, material, etc. from other sites. Isn’t there some sort of copyright protection or, at the very least, prohibitions against data mining on the sites where the content is being aggregated? It seems as though a simple trespass or copyright lawsuit would close Boorah, OpenList, etc down.
January 31, 2007 at 2:19 am
This is essentially what Google is doing. I agree there’s a gray area. The issues that you raise haven’t fully been litigated. But “factual” information isn’t protected (See the Feist decision: http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm)
January 31, 2007 at 9:26 am
We’ve just turned up the new Boorah site… you can check it out now at http://www.boorah.com