| Type | Internet |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Bob Pack |
| Headquarters | Danville, California, USA |
| Slogan | "User-powered search" |
| Website | sproose.com |
| Advertising | CPC text ads |
| Launched | 2007 |
| Current status | closed |
Sproose is a consumer search engine launched in August 2007[1] by founder Bob Pack. Sproose provides web search results from partners including MSN, Yahoo! and Ask.com. Sproose intends to have better-quality results than algorithmic search engines because its users are able to influence the ranking order of the search results by voting for websites (which moves them up in the order of search results) and deleting bad or spam results. It has been compared to Digg[2] and Mahalo.com,[3] among other social search websites. The results may be vulnerable to gaming.[4]
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Registration is not required to search on Sproose. If a user votes for a website, the vote is saved temporarily. In order to save the voted sites permanently, a user must sign up for an account. When a user registers with Sproose, a personal profile page is created. Each time a site is voted, a thumbnail and URL of the site is posted on the user's profile page, which may be public or private. Users may comment on each website; comments are visible to other users.
In January 2009, Sproose launched a recommendation engine[5] and voting platform. The recommendation engine allows users to rate and vote for content on partnered websites, and it allows for more information to be delivered to a user from the partnered site. It also allows sharing of information through its "widgets"[6] on social networks such as Facebook.
Sproose is privately held. The management team is:[7]