Anyone know why they pivoted? As of last summer, they were doing Cause related stuff (like we do at Causes.com). It was a little weird -- I saw a few cartoons on their site of a cute penguin (their logo) standing triumphantly over a dead polar bear (with the Causes logo). They also became the Mayor of our office on 4sq. So.. seeing that they're doing people search right now is a bit of a departure.
<i>Part of what’s hard about social search is that Facebook prohibits outside crawlers. But Riley said he’s confident that he can get Facebook data, because he has gotten advice from Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, and has worked with Facebook’s legal team to make sure everything’s kosher.</i><p>This would seem to be a key point. Can anyone provide further details? Facebook hasn't historically shown much inclination to let others into the walled garden: <a href="http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html" rel="nofollow">http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-go...</a><p>Why would Facebook allow this?
Congratulations to them! It's impressive, and the product seems really interesting.<p>But having 9 VC invested in your Company is really not an idea situation. (cf: <a href="http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/04/vc-signaling-coming-home-to-roost.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/04/vc-signaling-coming-home-to-...</a>)<p>I am wondering why they did not want to/could not raise money from one VC only who would have lead the round (with say $3M) with super angels and individuals completing the round. That would have made their Company so much more manageable at the board level...
Ark is "already" doing massive things for sure. It already has indexed 1 billion+ profiles and more coming in the pipeline. I do not know of any other search engine that has accomplished that yet