Topic: Coinosphere.com - The Google of Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 2475 times)

Sure, I do have some automated screening going on first of course... There's a lot of junk we shouldn't even see at all, and then the remainder will be judgement calls.

...seriously?

Thanks guys!

I appreciate the kind words and I'm working as fast as I can right now to cram all the merchants Sauron found into the directory for launch day... It's not a trivial number. 

Really nice design, I like it.  Clean & concise, just what's needed for a successful operation.

All the best, and keep us updated on the launch!

Looking slick Luke! Keep up the good work! 

Hi SQ,

For adult (pr0n) sites, I've decided to keep the listings out, for family accessibility (& SEO) reasons, but I'm still collecting them for a secondary directory/search engine to be launched later this year. Adult toy stores in particular have a very strong use for bitcoin and I hope to give that industry just as good of an offering one day soon.

For the ponzis and scams, we'll do our best to spot and weed them out at the manual level. Although sometimes it can be tough to spot them if they have good marketing & artwork, but even if they make it to a final listing on our site, there is a "report this listing" link beside every single listing that lets the public send it back to us for further review.

Thanks for the questions!

Luke:

Are you going to filter out or at least separate porn sites and ponzi scam sites from the listings?

No comment on the porn (just curious) but would hate to see you contribute to the proliferation of bitcoin ponzi schemes that are popping up all over the place.

Just saying....   

SQ

looking great!

Update time!

I've updated the bitcoinstarter campaign to include the following images, but I knew you guys here were very proof-oriented so you were probably waiting for something like these before you responded to the first post... Oh well, better late than never...

Here's a shot of the Eye of Sauron, after indexing one of the subforums here on bitcointalk:



That number is up to 63,876 merchants now by the way, although there are lots of bad listings in there that need to be discarded, such as news articles, splogs, and .onion sites. (I don't discard the pr0n sites, those get saved for a future project. )

Here's a shot of the front page of Coinosphere.com as it stands now:



I'm moving around banner locations often though, it'll probably look a lot smoother by Launch day on the 14th. Note the suggest functionality on the search bar: It's very smooth to search on there when you're in a hurry.

Finally, here's how the new listings page looks, zoomed in for better resolution:



I haven't even gone into all the other fun stuff on the site like the awesome Bitcoin events calendar, the big Map, all the different things you can add to your listings like videos & twitter feeds, nor the great news & FAQs pages. Too much to talk about before launch... But I do answer a lot of questions on the bitcoinstarter campaign page.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have here too.

Hope you guys love it!
-Luke

Coinosphere.com will completely solve the age-old problem of "where can I spend my BTC?"

Let's face it, BTC always seems to be a pipe dream to newcomers because they can't see it as a spendable money yet when it's not accepted nearby them... And they are not going to bother search very hard to do so.

But listing merchants & service providers in one place, like the BTC Wiki or Coinmap has proven to be a real challenge... These wikis and blogs all rely on the merchants to come to those websites to list themselves... And so far only a very small percentage of BTC-accepting merchants are doing so. (And yes I can state this for a fact.)

Bitpay says they now service 15,500+ vendors.
Coinbase says they service 16,000+ vendors.
Blockchain services thousands as well.
Heck, you can service your own damn merchant needs; just by placing a BTC address on your page...

So there are literally somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 merchants out there accepting bitcoin right now! Some are sure to be near you, but are not listed on a map anywhere. For now, they might as well have set up shop on the moon.

So I have created Coinosphere with the intention of getting proactive about finding all these merchants. We can't just sit here any longer and have every mom & pop shop come to us... We must go to them! All services that serve the industry will be found too. -And then I'll list these sites in my directory for the world to see in a sort-able, searchable format!  

This thread will serve as the official Coinosphere thread, so feel free to ask any questions you'd like answers to below. I don't bite. However first, please check out the Bitcoinstarter.com crowdfunding campaign for Coinosphere, where I've answered a lot of questions already:

http://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/391

It's not asking for much BTC; I've already finished coding the "Eye of Sauron" engine that finds these sites for me... But displaying them in a searchable frontend is what I need some more funding for... Only enough to pay for some directory coding and the artwork for Coinosphere.com, so on January 14th I can Launch on schedule.

However, if we make it up into the stretch goals the real magic happens... I think you're really going to like what you read there!

So please, ask any questions you have for me below, check out the campaign and say hi, check out the cool prizes there, tell all your BTC-loving friends about it, and maybe even stop by the Coinosphere facebook page too if you have a chance.

Hope you like it!
Luke
Coinosphere.com