Sproose is a consumer search engine

Search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 launched in August 2007 by founder Bob Pack. Sproose provides web search results from partners including MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

, Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 and Ask.com

Ask.com

Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...

. Sproose intends to have better-quality results than algorithmic search engines because its users are able to influence the ranking order of the search results by voting for websites (which moves them up in the order of search results) and deleting bad or spam results. It has been compared to Digg

Digg

Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...

 and Mahalo.com

Mahalo.com

Mahalo.com is a web directory and Internet-based knowledge exchange launched in alpha test in May 2007 by Jason Calacanis...

, among other social search

Social search

Social search or a social search engine is a type of web search that takes into account the Social Graph of the person initiating the search query...

websites. The results may be vulnerable to gaming.

Use of the site

Registration is not required to search on Sproose. If a user votes for a website, the vote is saved temporarily. In order to save the voted sites permanently, a user must sign up for an account. When a user registers with Sproose, a personal profile page is created. Each time a site is voted, a thumbnail and URL of the site is posted on the user's profile page, which may be public or private. Users may comment on each website; comments are visible to other users.

In January 2009, Sproose launched a recommendation engine and voting platform. The recommendation engine allows users to rate and vote for content on partnered websites, and it allows for more information to be delivered to a user from the partnered site. It also allows sharing of information through its "widgets" on social networks such as Facebook.

Company background

Sproose is privately held. The management team is:

• Bob Pack – Founder and CEO
• Gus Bourg – Vice President of Search Technology
• Steve Bourg – Vice President of Network Technology
• Stefan Groschupf – CTO