| Closed Date | 5/08 |
| Closed URL | readwriteweb.com/... |
| Website | eurekster.com |
| Category | Consumer Web |
| Employees | |
| Founded | 1/04 |
| TOTAL | $6.85M |
| FUNDING TOTAL | $6.85M |
| Series A, 12/04 Tapit Partners | $1.35M |
| Series B, 3/07 Technology Venture Partners TransCosmos | $5.5M |
Eurekster provides social search technologies. Its custom search portal and widget (called “swicki”) uses the content produced by online communities to improve search results. With Eurekster, web publishers can build and customize their swicki search portal on any topic, and share and distribute the social search widget to grow a community of interested users. With every search, the swicki becomes more relevant and meaningful to the user community, and more valuable to the swicki builder.
Eurekster is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with research and development located in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Eurekster has global reach in over 15 countries and is Asian Language enabled. Customers include branded sites, social networks, top blogs and blog platforms.
Eurekster was founded in 2004 by a core team including digital media and search technology veterans Steven Marder, who is CEO, and Grant Ryan, who is Chief Scientist. Eurekster is privately held and venture backed. Investors include Technology Venture Partners (TVP), Transcosmos, Tapit Partners and various angels.
| Website | eurekster.com/swickibuilder/custom |
| Launch Date | January 1, 2008 |
A swicki is a search portal and widget that can be customized on any topic to share, distribute and grow a community of interested users. Swickis offer a community-driven custom search experience resulting in more relevant, targeted results – as well as more traffic and revenue opportunity for Web publishers and “infopreneurs.” Swicki search results are guided by its publisher and powered by its community of users, taking into consideration keywords, clicks, votes and behavior from every search. Consequently, the swicki provides a custom search experience, as well as, a content discovery engine, while turning into an increasingly valuable asset to its publisher. Users have broad options from finding and grabbing existing swickis to building and sharing their own swicki creations. The social search widget included in the swicki features a customizable search box and “buzzcloud” and can be placed on any web site or blog where the swicki’s topic is of interest, making it easy for the swicki builder to grow their user community and build their brand.
Swickis scan the data indexed by multiple search feeds plus all additional sources specified by the swicki builder to provide the most relevant and targeted results. The search results ranking constantly changes, as the swicki takes into consideration the keyword, clicks, votes and behavior recorded from every search.
There’s a simple four-step process to creating a swicki. First, the swicki builder chooses the desired name and customizes the look and feel of the widget. Then, the scope of the search can be defined, ranging from one site or blog to universal multimedia results, including images and video. In a third step, the swicki is described and categorized for listing in the Eurekster swicki directory, before automatically generated html code can be accessed to place the swicki widget on web sites and share it with others. Saving and publishing a swicki requires user registration. To date, more than 100,000 swickis have been created by over 20,000 swicki builders in over 15 countries.
