Rapper and technology enthusiast MC Hammer has launched his own internet search engine, WireDoo, with the slogan, ‘search once and see what’s related.’
The rapper, best known for his 80’s hit ‘You Can’t Touch This’, launched his search engine at this week’s Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
Although he seems an unlikely digital entrepreneur, Hammer has been involved in several hi-tech ventures in the past few years.
“I thought it would be interesting to share one of the things I was working on,” said Hammer, “It’s not an attempt to reinvent search. You can always make things better. We were working on what we could do with data to make it better. I’ll be careful when I say that – I just saw Sergei in the back.’
The rapper was referring to Google’s co-founder Sergei Brin.
“The real question,” asked Hammer, “Is should it be more than just keywords and those ten blue links?”
Wiredoo is built on ‘relationship’ searches – the idea that searching the web isn’t simply about one keyword.
The example Hammer gave was searching for a car – which he said is not simply a keyword search, but a search for related models, mileage, insurance, price and even car dealerships near your home.
He describes Wiredoo as a ‘relationship search’.
The search engine will reportedly bring up several ‘vertical’ searches at once, showing related topics and searches.
Hammer showed off the search working to bring up ‘related’ boxes about an initial search.
By contrast, Hammer pointed out that Google searching ‘90210’ – the post code of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, brought up huge numbers of results related to the television show Beverly Hills 90210, and results relating to the place were ‘buried’ beneath these.
Whether it can complete with hi-tech juggernauts such as Google remains to be seen.
The search contender is currently in pre-beta and not available to the public.
Hammer, born Stanley Burrell, was influential in taking rap music mainstream, but went bankrupt in 1996.
The former rapper said he came upon this two-year search project “toiling” around in the valley, spending time with young startup CEOs.
The 2011 Web Summit 2.0 theme was “The Data Frame” and focused on consumption of data and the impact on the current economy. Other notable guests include Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and 4chan’s Christoper Poole.
View Hammer’s presentation in full in the video below:
