IRSeek.com - Indexing IR Conversations Around the Net

IRSeek is an IRC search engine (Internet Relay Chat). Based in Israel, this new startup indexes public chat channels—so far, it’s already indexed 300 million conversations, or about 6 million per day. IRSeek is listening in on over 2000 channels across ten networks. If you want to find out what’s the word on any subject from soccer or iPods, now you can simply by entering your term on the site’s search box. The most popular searches form a tag cloud on the front page. IRSeek maintains the privacy of its users—once files are shared, the conversation is abandoned. The company does not eavesdrop. Searches, however can be conducted by user nicknames, and conversations mentioning the name.

“IRSeek utilizies the power of the people on IRC and brings it to the rest of the community to enjoy and learn from.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) remains one of the most active platforms for sharing knowledge and collaborating on the Internet.
www.IRSeek.com (still in Beta) strives to make this hidden gem available to the entire Internet community. By constantly archiving thousands of active, highly-focused, public chat-rooms in a wide variety of topics (e.g. Linux, soccer, Christianity, poker, business and others) then indexing, processing and publishing the content on the web using advanced Web 2.0 technologies while maintaining the privacy of the users, we are creating a knowledge base different from any other.”

IRC conversations are a unique source. IRSearch is providing a valuable service by indexing and archiving these chats for public use. Users of the search will be better able to sift through useful information and discard the rest. There’s quite a bit of interesting and practical knowledge to be found in IRC.

Will users feel that their privacy is being invaded? Will they be wary about the idea that their chats are recorded and can be searched by anyone? Are these conversations meaningful in any way—will searchers be able to glean any real information from this?