Otavo.com - The Intention Search Engine

Otavo makes searching social. Essentially, it looks something like Metafilter cross bred with Ask and Diigo. Searches are called quests. You start questing by asking a question, e.g. ‘how do I enjoy a vacation in Madrid?’. Other users can comment on your quest and add it to their own profiles, which contain all the social networking features you’d expect—friends, blogs, messaging, etc. Once you’ve gone through your results, you can add the most helpful and useful items to your account, with tags and descriptions. There’s also a javascript bookmarklet called a flotster (floating poster) so you can pull in items as you’re searching the web without losing your bookmarker as you move back and forth between pages. Otavo rewards its users for inviting new people, adding new quests, for blog entries, and posts.

“As an Otavo user you simply ask any question or seek a quest of your choice. More than just a search engine, Otavo is a community of users and staff members that participate in your quest to help you find answers quicker!

Otavo filters information quickly and allows you to track projects, tasks and items you plan to purchase. Manage links and go beyond collecting and categorizing information, quests can group links by how you intend to use them.”

Otavo is inspired, it’s offering something collaborative, playful and different. All of its functionalities are thoughtfully constructed. It’s well made and will keep people interested.

Does this one have too much of a learning curve for newcomers? Is this nothing new at all—just a mix of old stuff, that won’t perk up too much interested? Will it be able to compete with everyone else out there? How’s it planning to fund itself?