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Aardvark

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Aardvark (formerly Mechanical Zoo) is a social search engine, founded by a group of former Google employees. Aardvark that lets users ask questions that are distributed to the social graph for a quick and high quality answers. It launched into private beta in 2008.

Aardvark is a way to get quick, quality answers to questions from your extended social network. You can ask questions via an instant message buddy or email. The questions are then farmed out to your contacts (and their contacts) based on what they say they have knowledge of. If you ask taste related questions about music, books, movies, restaurants, etc., they’ll ask people who tend to show similar tastes as you in their profile.

Richard Chen has invested in Aardvark

Recent Milestones

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• 
  Closed. (9/1/11)
  Posted
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  Aardvark was acquired by Google for $50M. (2/11/10)
  Posted 2/11/10 at 10:07am via techcrunch.com
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  Aardvark added Remi Gabillet as Rails Engineer. (9/1/09)
  Posted 11/17/10 at 7:29pm
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  Aardvark added Sacha Arnoud as Herpetologist. (4/1/09)
  Posted 11/5/12 at 11:35am
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  Aardvark added Ben Keighran as Lead advisor for mobile products. (3/2/09)
  Posted 11/6/09 at 11:42am
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  Aardvark received $5.25M in Series A funding. (10/1/08)
  Posted 10/29/08 at 11:17am via techcrunch.com
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  Aardvark added Ryan Dewsbury as Wildlife Herder. (7/1/08)
  Posted 2/3/11 at 5:15pm
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  Aardvark received $750k in Angel funding. (1/1/07)
  Posted 4/22/08 at 11:03am via news.com
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  Aardvark added Damon Horowitz as Co-Founder. (1/1/07)
  Posted 4/22/08 at 11:03am
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  Aardvark added Sep Kamvar as Adviser.
  Posted 4/22/08 at 11:03am
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  Aardvark added Rob Spiro as Co-Founder.
  Posted 10/29/08 at 11:36am
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  Aardvark added Jim Lanzone as Advisor and Investor.
  Posted 12/13/09 at 10:18am
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  Aardvark added David Hornik as Board of Directors.
  Posted 3/13/09 at 10:44am
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  Aardvark added Max Ventilla as Co-Founder.
  Posted 4/22/08 at 11:03am
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  Aardvark added Nathan Stoll as Co-Founder.
  Posted 4/22/08 at 11:03am
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  Aardvark added Gene Tsai as zoo musicologist.
  Posted 9/4/09 at 10:57am

Videos

Screenshots

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Products

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Aardvark

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Website	vark.com
Blog	blog.vark.com
Stage	Alpha

Aardvark, an application currently for facebook only, as of July 2009, is a subjective search based on real-world social networks. Aardvark is operated via email or IM. Aardvark will consult your social network within two or three degrees of separation to find relevant answers and information.

Above: Aardvark Screenshot -- #1
Uploaded: 11/3/08

Traffic Analytics

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Sources

1. Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million (techcrunch.com) [edit]
2. Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search (news.com) [edit]
3. Mechanical Zoo Gets $6 Million To Build Aardvark Social Search Product (techcrunch.com) [edit]