Hoosgot (pronounced “who’s got”) is a simple way to ask who’s got what you’re looking for. Just put “hoosgot” in a blog post or a Twitter tweet and it’ll show up here in Hoosgot. It’s meant to give you a place to send the requests for all of those things that you’ve wanted, but just can’t find - chances are, what you want already exists and someone else out there in the ether knows about it.
If someone’s got what you’re looking for, or a clue in that direction, they post a comment. RSS feeds flow from the comments.
For example, you might ask:
hoosgot an easy-to-use pencil sharpener that has suction cups on the bottom so I can stick it anywhere?
or:
hoosgot a simple camera bag that you can stick a laptop in, and still carry over your shoulder without knocking over pedestrians? Note I’m not looking for a knapsack or a backpack, I want it to act like a messenger bag…
And so on.
Of course, you can subscribe to hoosgot, we have RSS feeds so you can watch and participate - for hoosgot only works if you comment on the questions posed. Happen to know where someone can find the information they seek? Interested in collaborating with them on creating that invention described when the person invoked hoosgot or the lazyweb? Leave a comment on the entry, and give back to the web that has given us so much.
We humbly trace our roots to the wonderful lazyweb which, unfortunately shut down in 2006. It was a glorious experiment in what the web could produce - co-creation on a global scale. Many many thanks to Ben Hammersley for setting it up, and running the original site.
Hoosgot is run by David Sifry, blogger, photographer, and entrepreneur, founder of a few companies you may have heard of, most recently Technorati. This is a personal project in his spare time. The code is still pretty alpha, and it may break. If you see something strange on the site, drop him a line at david AT sifry DOT com, or simply invoke hoosgot or the lazyweb in your blog post or twitter, and hoosgot should catch it, sooner or later.
We are tinkering with various ways to fend off abuse and spam, but hopefully that won’t become a major issue, at least for now. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Acknowledgements
To start, many thanks to the folks behind the original Lazyweb site. Here’s who they credited:
Who’s Behind This? Primarily, you are. Since its launch you’ve given the LazyWeb over 100 ideas, and the LazyWeb only works when people give ideas and help each other to make the web a greater place. But, if we have to name names, Matt Jones had the original idea (and designed the logo), this site was built and is run by Ben Hammersley following a LazyWeb request from Clay Shirky. The domain name is owned and donated by Pete Birkenshaw. Wicked-cool Movable Type jiggerypokery is by David Raynes. The search box is magnificently awesome work by Maciej Ceglowski
Many thanks, folks.
Doc Searls came up with the name Hoosgot, and Technorati and Tweet Scan help with the heavy lifting. Matt Mullenweg leads Wordpress, which much of this site is built upon. You guys rock!
6 responses so far ↓
1 Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » Hoosgot: The Lazyweb is Back! // Dec 31, 2007 at 10:44 am
[…] how do you send your requests over to hoosgot? Simply mention hoosgot in post or Twitter message, and it will appear on the […]
2 @jeanlucr: Hoosgot : nouveau service de bouteille à la … // Dec 31, 2007 at 3:40 pm
[…] about […]
3 Hoosgot a new web service/word? | TechBurgh // Jan 1, 2008 at 3:31 am
[…] show up here in Hoosgot. It is inspired by the Lazyweb, so invoking the lazyweb works too! See About Hoosgot for more information. Follow hoosgot on Twitter to stay up-to-date what you and others are asking […]
4 .:dydimustk:. » Blog Archive » hoosgot // Jan 2, 2008 at 11:20 pm
[…] comment on Dave’s post about his new experiment called hoosgot.com. You can read their about page to learn more about the service, but basically it makes it really easy to ask a whole ton of people […]
5 Venomous Kate // Jan 14, 2008 at 1:32 am
Dave, as someone who read Silfray Hraka back when you were on Blogspot — and still chuckles about the Watership Down tie-in — I just want to thank you for resurrecting LazyWeb.
And you, too, Matt, Clay, Pete, David and Maciej. (How DO you pronounce that?) Thank you, too, Doc… it’s been a long time since we’ve had any web interaction.
I just wanted to say that I’m so very grateful to all of you for resurrecting the LazyWeb project.
I’d subscribed (for a price I considered a bargain) to Ben’s email newsletter way back when. With every issue, even the “just moved to Italy” ones, I felt like a thief because I always got so much information for such a low price.
Between David and Ben I learned more about blogging — and about taking pride in my blogs’ influence with reader opinions — than I’d ever thought possible. They both taught me to accept my impulse to blog and also to see blogging as part of (although not the extent of) my life.
I can’t count the number of times I turned to LazyWeb in the past for answers to the things I was afraid to ask or didn’t know how to discover on my own. I also can’t tell you how amazing it was way back when, as a new blogger, it felt to discover people with your kind of influence who were offering help to those who took the time to ask.
Because of David and Ben — and even Doc way back when my blogged gained his temporary attention, the blogosphere felt like a community when I was struggling to launch my first blog, ElectricVenom.com, five years ago. I haven’t forgotten that, and if you hadn’t been so hospitable I might have given up blogging long ago.
To learn that LazyWeb is now in its Lazarus stage is such wonderful news and a testament to the passion of bloggers like yourselves who are determined to improve and edify this addictive yet world-shaping hobby of ours.
Thank you. Thank you for the times you helped me out back then, and thank you for help you’ll be giving others now, too.
Thank you for making the huge, rambunctious blogosphere feel like a community where anyone and everyone can fit in and find help if they’ll only take the time to ask.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I wish you all the very best success with this Lazurus incarnation of the LazyWeb.
6 Left Margin plz // Feb 18, 2008 at 10:48 am
Who’s got a bit left margin for this site?
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