Riya’s Like.com Is First True Visual Image Search

November 8th, 2006 at 1:31 am

There was a program which did this a few years ago. It’s called Miltonsoft but… it’s actually catered to searching for porn pictures from the same person… http://www.miltonsoft.com/intro.html

November 8th, 2006 at 1:38 am

Mickey: it is a LOT better business model than their first iteration. I have more over here: http://scobleizer.com/2006/11/.....to-search/

November 8th, 2006 at 1:46 am

I do not get it, do users have to only like/search what they see at like.com ? What if I see something great on some other site and want to find similar stuff ? If that can not do that, this is just a shopping portal, nothing more.

November 8th, 2006 at 1:57 am

this does sound like a niche area…..how many of us have time to do visual search to buy something we saw some where??

i guess this is just the start….business model might evolve over the time…like how riya got tons of buzz when they launched….but did not go anywhere….forcing company to think in different direction resulting like.com

November 8th, 2006 at 2:14 am

Using 1000 variables defines a photo sounds like something different, I’d like to see a bit more detail on how the algorithms work.

November 8th, 2006 at 2:23 am

A small question:
Why spend millions on a bunch of PhD’s developing a super sophisticated search engine and then use Microsoft Paint to make the logo? The interface makes the site look cheap and simple, even though the technology behind might be unique and beautiful.

November 8th, 2006 at 2:39 am

Amazing stuff… Works like magic.. And to think it is only in alpha! Superb!

November 8th, 2006 at 2:55 am

I wonder who has picked the blue color for the site.

November 8th, 2006 at 3:03 am

Is the engine actually capable of finding out which brand / model of watch Paris Hilton is actually wearing (which I fancy could translate into sales) or does it gives a similar list based on rough assumptions (watch looks grey, looks shiny so there must be diamonds etc….). Who’s gonna be interested in buying a similar watch to Paris’ ?

November 8th, 2006 at 3:26 am

munjal, thanks for the market size information

my questoin is how much of $15b is generated by people who buy look alikes? and out of total look alike buys - how many people are willing to do online visual search

i really admire the technology behind like.com (i assume it is spiced up image processing/pattern matching technology), but i do not see big revenue opportunities through visiual search

having said that there might be more revenue opportunities through licensing your technology to other vendors or some thing!!

November 8th, 2006 at 3:35 am

I think thats freaking amazing. Well done.

Now you just need an ‘expensiveness’ filter as Paris Hiltons watch is probably worth a lot more than the sum of those results

Seriously, I think it’s impressive.

November 8th, 2006 at 3:43 am

Keanu: in the interview I did with Munjal (Riya/Like.com’s CEO) he hints pretty strongly that feature will come in the future.

November 8th, 2006 at 4:24 am

I feel that Riya already come out with a killer app for visual search. I agree with Robert Scoble. It take almost more than 1 year for Google to find out the right business model until they buy Applied Semantics (context-sensitive ad technology) and Sprinks to be built into the core business. Yes, Google for sure thankful for their core search technology - Pagerank but without the aquisitions both company above, Google would not able to Giant in Internet. So, I would argue for those people that saying Riya.com would not be successful. Seriously, have you been using Riya lately? I’ve been using for quite long time. I see a lot of potential in it. How you measure a succesful internet company? Riya with it new baby - like.com obviously changing the landscape of the web. My suggestion to munjal;

1) Approach manufacturer (electronic/ industrial design/ clothing etc.) and get the full catalog out. Because Riya - visual recognition engine which a impressive, the consumers can just compare and relevant match the right component in seconds.

2) Built a visual search server (plug n play) and license it. The manufacturer just add the catalog (especially image) to server. Then charge them for pay per use. (just a suggestion).

Will Riya add this features? Now Riya competing again Retrevo.com and Imaginestics.com and off course, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

All the best to Riya.

Love you product.

November 8th, 2006 at 5:07 am

I tried isolating Tyra Banks’ cleavage as a”like” - didn’t get the results I wanted tho!

November 8th, 2006 at 5:58 am

Really interesting site, fun… but i don’t like it to actually shop. I prefer the approach taken by http://www.chezimelda.com - their technology is super quick and intuitive - what else do you need to shop ? Can’t wait for the handbag verision

November 8th, 2006 at 6:38 am

Steve, you can’t wait for the handbag version? You honestly have to try harder than that what your pushing your own products. Next time try saying something like “My girlfriend loves using it”.

From a techie guy’s perspective I happen to think Like.com is pretty impressive. If they can get their name out there then this will skyrocket. The way you can browse around makes it much easier to find what you need. I’ve always hated trying to try and guess the correct keywords when looking for products.

So, they have a business plan *and* a good technology base. I think that disqualifies them from being a real Web 2.0 company.

November 8th, 2006 at 6:57 am

I am with SutroStyle and Alexander Straub - I don’t think they have the technology. The image recognition technology simply does not exist yet, not at this level of generality. That’s why you can’t download images, that’s why you have to search within “categories”, that’s why they aren’t interested in face recognition anymore, etc. For the next year, I predict more “categories” and more promises. By the way, there have been some successes with this technology. It is missed by the public because of the different name - machine vision. The challenges are enormous, but at least there are some practical, commercial applications (quality inspection etc) right now not in the future…

November 8th, 2006 at 7:20 am

This is a phenominal use of this technology. The only thing missing is an API so that others could leverage this from their applicaitons. I could see how this could be utilized from other applicaitons or websites. It would work similar to adsense, where Riya would get their cut, but the site implementing the Like.com API from their site could also get a cut for pushing people through.

It also looks that Like plans to take the approach that free411(aka Jingle) has done by offering alternatives to the original piece of merchandise, thus opening the revenue potential further, not only for Like.com, but business opps for many suppliers and merchants.

I notice that they have a link on the bottom of like.com for getting your products into the system, but it looks like a manual process rather then a self-serve solution.

Much success with this Munjal. This looks like a winner.

November 8th, 2006 at 7:43 am

Michael

I am surprised that there was no mention of how much the domain name cost Riya - any insights?

November 8th, 2006 at 7:46 am

The Like.com engine takes both text and images as queries, something no one else does…..

This is an untrue statement. If you look at the stock photography business, several web sites have been doing this for some time (I believe one uses a product called Idee).

November 8th, 2006 at 7:53 am

They would have been better off turning like.com into a dating site.

November 8th, 2006 at 8:21 am

You guys are missing the point…

Munjal and Riya.com isn’t really targeting tech folks or even just the average searcher but the millions of people (mostly women) who watch E!, read US weekly and InStyle Magazine, and scour shopping/fashion blogs like my own.

Munjal has brilliantly tapped into the aspirational feeling that is dominate in US consumer culture (ie: I want to wear what Paris Hilton wore to the Emmys, but how I find one like it in my price range). If he can effectively get the fashion/shopping bloggers as well as sites like iVillage and mags like Lucky on board, Riya could be a HUGE success with little competition. However, I do agree that Riya will need to expand their revenue model a bit- perhaps license the tech out?

(Munjal if you’re looking for employees send a sister an email!)

November 8th, 2006 at 8:30 am

First likeness based search? You gotta be kidding. What about http://HashThySelf.com which has been around for at least a year!

Granted HashThySelf is focused on image search over just faces, but the idea is already there and the riya service was already suggested in the Hashthyself blogs.

-P

November 8th, 2006 at 8:38 am

They should do a tie up with the popsugar guys and gals….this is good stuff so long as they can find people (should be mostly women!) who want to do the likeness search.
And if it does take off, the business model won’t be an issue. Affiliate programs, PPC, even direct sales….there’s a lot of money to be made if people buy the concept.

November 8th, 2006 at 9:15 am

In entrepreneurship, being too early is worse than being too late. I have seen this happen too many times. One case that I personally experienced with some good friends (Bradley Horowitz, Jeff Bach, Chiao-Fe Shu, Paul Lego, …) is the case of visual search for shopping. What Riya announced now and seems to be getting some traction was announced and championed by Virage in 1995. But that was too early and Virage became standard image blade (or cartridge) on popular databases, but could not build business so moved on to video.

My best wishes to Munjal Shah for making this happen now.

November 8th, 2006 at 9:44 am

I have to agree with the people that say it doesnt work - I have read their entire blog tonight (a few hours) - as I was interested in this topic, and have not spent some time playing on their site and think that while it is a good concept it does not appear to work - YET.

If they can get it to work - Great. I think that they would have been better waiting and make sure that it works better. The algorithm must be very heavy if they have 250 Quad core servers with over 20 GB of Ram and the site still runs this slow.

Its all very well to release early release often, but if you are going to release make sure it works my search just returned a starting price of shoes as $1000000 (note also that they did not use , to seperate the 0’s)

Great Idea - Good marketing - not so good to bad implementation - Crap interface

November 8th, 2006 at 9:57 am

It worked for me. Look how similar these boots look. I bought some.

http://www.like.com/like?btnSe.....1629ce3f90

My main beef is how slow the site is.

November 8th, 2006 at 10:12 am

hmmm… Well, I’m very, very familiar with the market they’re targeting (fashion/style/online shopping), not just from my site StyleDiary (which is in this space) but also because I’ve worked on the ecommerce/online retail back-end for a pretty long time. I very closely monitor user behavior within this niche, including what motivates shoppers, what tools they use and respond to, how quickly they adopt, etc. on a daily basis and how to reach them. I’ve built three start-ups that are either doing well, or have enough to support that they’ll do well, based on the intelligence we pull from this market.

I think this service could work, especially if it’s put in front of people the right way and easy enough to use - but of course it’s all going to depend on Riya’s marketing and how well they can reach the right audience. Internet shoppers are pretty much broken into two groups - the core audience (who are camped out online all day, very savvy and know the market well) and then the offline audience, who are the average joes that know a few sites but aren’t as familiar. The first is extremely well versed and know where to find what they need with incredible precision. They are smart enough to know all of the big shopping message boards and if they’re trying to find an item or similar, they’ll ask - and get what they need. They know about the style stalker sites (sites that show you exactly what a celebrity is wearing) and how to find products. The second has very little idea.

Riya could reach both, but doing so would probably take two slightly different strategies as the two groups respond differently and to different forms of marketing. It would need to be positioned the right way with the right tone and any ineffectiveness in the technology would quickly turn users away and their feedback or feelings on it would then virally spread around the Web. But if it’s stable and works well, I could absolutely see girls using it.

I would think possibly moreso, though, that this would be a great tool for the style/fashion publishing industry, which is always looking for products for roundups, etc. - you’ll be saving an intern a lot of time with this type of solution.

November 8th, 2006 at 10:30 am

Hi Panda, (This is in response to your comment a