Greplin’s (YC W10) Social Search Opens Its Doors To All

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/greplins-social-search-opens-its-doors-to-all/

by smanek • 15 years ago

66 21 15 years ago

Alex3917• 15 years ago

Just signed up for every service except Facebook. While Facebook would be probably the most useful service to have enabled, it's really hard to justify turning on the Facebook applications platform for any reason.

cfontes• 15 years ago

Good luck for them, the service seems nice.

nyellin2• 15 years ago

I like what Greplin is trying to do, but I wont sign up for an account. I am uncomfortable authorizing one service to access so many of my accounts.

Edit: Greplin doesn't request usernames or passwords. I updated my comment accordingly.

kevinclark• 15 years ago

We don't actually store usernames and passwords. We're all OAuth, all the time, and you're welcome to revoke access whenever you like. We'll also delete all of your data as soon as possible when you ask us to.

nyellin2• 15 years ago

Do you encrypt data? If your servers are compromised, will someone have access to all of my emails?

Even if that is the case, I might be more comfortable using Greplin if I knew more about your security practices. What procedures are in place to prevent my emails from being stolen?

Edit: I hate being the one to criticize an incredible idea that is the result of hard work. I feel obligated to add that I want to use Greplin and I probably will use it for Facebook and Twitter. (Facebook's built-in search is useless.) I really hope there is a way that I can use this for email too.

lrm242• 15 years ago

Do you store full copies of all data? What I mean is, if someone breaks into Greplin, can they effectively read all of my email assuming I've synced with Gmail? Or do you just index the data and reference sources using URLs?

nickstamas• 15 years ago

Every service I connected (Twitter, LinkedIn, GMail, Dropbox, Facebook) uses OAuth, so Greplin never sees your passwords.

arst• 15 years ago

A locally-hosted Greplin-like service is an idea I've been kicking around for a while and slowly prototyping -- my angle is more on the archival side, but once you have the data search is a natural step. Another interesting attempt down these lines is the (just recently announced) Locker project https://github.com/quartzjer/Locker (being written by the guy who created XMPP).

treskot• 15 years ago

A locally-hosted Greplin-like service is already available. Checkout http://www.cloudmagic.com

zck• 15 years ago

I signed up, and Greplin finally finished indexing my data (it took a few days). However, a big minus for me is that Greplin doesn't search Gmail chat logs, and it doesn't disclose that until I searched through the FAQs. I hope they're able to add that soon.

baddox• 15 years ago

My indexing only took a couple of hours. I also quickly discovered to my dismay that GMail chat logs aren't indexed.

tlrobinson• 15 years ago

This sounds great, but I'm a little wary of giving a single service (especially a small new startup) access to so much private data.

They do get points for requiring HTTPS and using OAuth instead of asking for passwords, though.

I think I'll start with the low risk accounts like Twitter and LinkedIn for now.

bretthellman• 15 years ago

Nice integrations.... Any plans to include web search? I don't see myself adopting the behavior of having to think to go to google for web search or greplin for non-web search. Search is search. If I have to go somewhere else, I imagine I'd likely visit the actual destination (FB, Twitter)... Thoughts?

tommoor• 15 years ago

I can envisage a chrome extension that would embed greplin results within your organic google results...

Infact i have already asked for API access, heh.

quan• 15 years ago

The "autocomplete your life" slogan at the end of the video puts a smile on my face

agaton• 15 years ago

Great concept and execution! I've had the same idea for years but thought Google would launch this sooner or later. Love that it was launched with a business model as well.

Some feedback:

* I would be able to search local files as well. Dropbox is a great start but I want all of it ;)

* The UI have some neat features (love the interactive graphics on the upgrade page!) but overall it has to be improved a lot. Better graphics, better search result page, typography and especially all the buttons.

* Another way of monetizing the idea is to have partnerships with backup services. Affiliate deal or whatever. Since the user want the content searchable, they probably want backup of it as well.

Greplin’s (YC W10) Social Search Opens Its Doors To All

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