Lemonade Monday: Mahalo as a platform; What should Mahalo's API include and what should our license be?
Let’s start Monday off by squeezing some juice from the weekend’s lemons and adding some simple sugar shall we? The “former friend” had two points that are valid (both came after the berating… but I digress 
:
a) how, if at all, can we make Mahalo into a plaform the people can play with?
b) how can we enable people to profit from that platform?*
* [ Note: With regard to making money, we already have 800+ folks working in the Mahalo Greenhouse getting paid thousands of dollars a month in aggregate. This is the same model I used at Weblogs, Inc. We have a very revolutionary model for people getting paid.... we pay them for work. ]
Mahalo’s API
Our API is in the works and I’d like to give folks the chance to contribute to it. From my perspective the ability to pull the following from our database in order to play is a nice starting point:
- The Mahalo Top Seven: our editorial device in which we narrow down the best seven links on the web for a particular search. A lot of work and deliberation goes into this list and as such it is a very, very clean list.
- Guide Note: Our Guide Notes are concise explanations of a search term. Clearly pulling these short descriptors could help some applications… right?
- Disambiguation Tree: Our disambiguation lessons (i.e. do you mean Rome the TV show or Rome the city?) might be able to help other projects. Of course, we don’t have this is structured format really.
- Fast Facts: Quick Facts about search.
- Related Searches: A guides’ view on related terms for a keyword.
- New Pages
- Categories
- Recent Changes
- Banned Links (by search term)
- Approved Links (by search term)
Any thoughts on how to leverage our dataset for the old “win-win?”
Mahalo’s License
Right now we are reserving all rights, but I think a creative commons, non-commercial, attribution license might be acceptable with regard to our business. Of course, I’m concerned about how attribution occurs and what is defined as commercial and non-commercial. Is a non-commercial site by a commercial company non-commercial? Is a non-commercial site that drives traffic to a commercial site really non-commercial? As a content holder I’ve always take the “ask us” approach and I’m a little concerned about unlocking the doors to the kingdom. In terms of commercial activity I’m open to any discussion with anyone about it at any time.
Advice and thoughts on a license? Pros and cons? Ways to manage them?
[ Very cute photo CC by e.t. ]
