Stanley K. Burrell is a web entrepreneur who is working on launching a search engine, WireDoo, that will improve user experience through relationship-driven searches.Stanley K. Burrell is also better known to millions of fans across the world as MC Hammer, the superstar rapper and entertainer who has sold over 50 million records worldwide. His unrivaled popularity and success in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s was punctuated by trademark ‘Hammer pants’ and legendary dance moves. Hammer time now though has moved on and is devoted to entrepreneurial business adventures on the web.
If this is the first time you are hearing of Mr Hammer’s exploits on the web, I can assure you that it is not his first endeavor. Stanley K. Burrell has been a fixture in the tech and web game for years now. He adopted Twitter (@MCHammer) in its early days and has been an start-up angel investor to several new web ventures. His stature in the web and tech industry his highlighted in his address to Harvard Business School students in 2009 when he stated that “I’m building my social media ecosystem one peg at a time”.
The transition from musician to tech entrepreneur was a natural progression due to the nature of social media tools connecting fans with artists and their music for Hammer. MySpace and Facebook were opportunities to increase engagement for fans and and awareness of acts. Some of his tech ventures included an iPhone app which allowed users to keep up with the man himself in real time, called BurrellTime, and his DanceJam.com site, which pulled from his experience in entertainment and the requisite advertising involved.
For Hammer now though his pet project is WireDoo. WireDoo was born from his desire to improve search through relationship-driven searches. This means that the results to your search will go beyond generalities and give deeper and more relative information which will in turn greatly improve the experience for users.
An example of how WireDoo will function: if you type in your post code and search then there will be a display of basic results on that area, with also an area for related content. Within the related content section, users will find links to search results on schools, hospitals, homes and more in that post code. Then by clicking on schools, for example, that would bring up a broad subset of links to further information on teacher credentials, marks, student demographics and more. Each click will allow the user to drill further down into specific topics.
How widely WireDoo is adopted on the web is still up for debate. Hammer has hinted that it could either stand on its own as a unique search platform, or another company could incorporate it into their offering to improve search for existing users.
You might be reading this and thinking that Google Instant is already achieving what WireDoo is set out to do by trying to meet consumers at the point of decision-making. But the way in which results on WireDoo would be presented and the way in which they bring about more of a solution by keyword, instead of just results, does make sense within the search marketplace currently. For Stanley K. Burrell, hammer time may well soon become search time and to the search giants of Google and Bing he might be able to unleash these four words: “You can’t touch this”.
