Looking to capitalize on the need for more specialized search services, Vast launches today. Vast is a search engine and Web crawler designed to more easily find classified ads. The initial focus has been on three areas – autos, personals and jobs, but more topics like housing, motorcycles and pets will be added as the year goes on.
“Think of it as multiple, vertical classified search across the Web,” says founder Naval Ravikant. “This is not something you may want to use for mainstream dating. But the good news is that for any kind of niche thing, whether you want to meet goths or midgets or prisoners, this is the place to go.”
While the giants such as Google and eBay are trying to make it easier to find specific items, Vast will try to sneak around the giants by making it easier for individuals to get their ads seen.
“We are building the open version of Google Base. Rather than going to Google and putting in your information, you can leave it where it is. It can be on a car dealership site, on Craigslist, on your blog. You don’t have to tag it in any special way,” Ravikant says. “We come along and index it and structure it so you can compare it to similar items.”
CNet News has a much more concise write up which includes information on past ventures of Naval Ravikant as well as how he acquired the domain “vast.com” itself.
