My wife and I spent a week on the big island of Hawaii last month, and I have to say that I was floored by how popular Mahalo is out there! As soon as we landed in Hawaii (and even on the flight from Newark), I couldn’t go more than a few minutes without overhearing someone talking about Mahalo.

Everywhere we turned, it was “Mahalo this,” “Mahalo that.” For some reason, Hawaiians just love human-powered search! (Frustratingly, I would only hear people say “Mahalo” right before the conversations ended, so I never heard exactly what they thought about the site. Nevertheless, they were usually smiling when they said it, so I took that as a good sign.)

And talk about free advertising! “Mahalo” was plastered all over the place – on welcome signs, trash cans, in bathrooms, and even on souvenir placards in gift shops:

I’m not sure why they didn’t use our actual logo (probably copyright concerns), but we should really do a case study on what propelled our site to such ubiquity in the Aloha State.