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March 21, 2008

Get Into The SearchMe Private Beta Right Now

Michael Arrington

62 comments »

New Sequoia-backed visual search engine SearchMe is just starting to send invitations to their private beta, which launched last week. The company says there are 30,000 people now on the waiting list. But if you want to get in now, just click here and enter your email. The first 1,000 people get in immediately.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Jegman

    March 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am

    still a few more things to work on, but overall, i think this site has a promising future. for visual-oriented people like myself, i love this concept! plus it saves me a lot of time not having to go into irrelevant search results. it will be interesting to see how other search engines react.

  2. Philip Kaplan

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Love it!

  3. bob cobb

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Pretty cool. Just a quick test here but the search results didnt seem as relevant as google

  4. SG

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am

    Interesting - Web Search + Itunes Coverflow

    I can see how I might use an engine like this depending on my search criteria

  5. Brad Jashinsky

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am

    I’ve been using the site for a few days since I joined the beta when it was first featured on TechCrunch. I joined it thinking I’d only use it once or so, but I’ve really gotten attached to using it. While their index is far from complete I was impressed by how comprehensive it already is. A lot of search start-ups straggle with that aspect, which makes me use them once and then never come back.

    This is going to be a great search engine once the index is complete, because you save so much time not clicking on spam or irrelevant sites. For research projects and looking for specific tutorials I’ve found myself saving a ton of time.

  6. SearcH◆ EngineS WEB

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am

    The results are about on the relevancy level of MSN.

    The one element that is annoying is the 100% use of flash SERPs .

    what is wrong the returning HTML text as SERPs?

    Also the SERPs are at the bottom - forcing you to scroll.

    The idea is good - having several search categories initially shown - to force users to refine the direction of their search terms.

    It has potential - you can see the ideals, thought and planning that went into it -

  7. bs

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:12 am

    another fucking search engine

  8. Michael Arrington

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:13 am

    the relevancy of the search results is pretty awful right now, but they said that up front. They’re really just showcasing the UI for now, and working on the engine for the public launch.

  9. Philipp Küng

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Nice search engine!

    But I guess it could be a little faster using Silverlight. And embedding the html in a 3d appearance other than making an image of the site would bring a lot of speed aswell.

  10. YDrive

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am

    Certainly an interesting experience with the simple screenshots-clicking :-)

  11. Faramarz

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:20 am

    Wow.. i did not expect the ‘cover flow’ style to be so seamless. zero lag on my end.

    thumbs up for the UI.
    the search did find me… so i’ll keep my reservations for later.

    thanks for the swift sign up process on this long weekend holiday!!

  12. Yakov

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am

    I’m sorry for their investors. The best way to beat Google is not by creating a better search destination site.

  13. Philip Kaplan

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:26 am

    @Yakov - People said the same thing about Google when they went up against Altavista, Excite, Yahoo and everyone else. If anything, Google has proven that sometimes all it takes is a fresh perspective.

  14. Michael

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am

    vertical search is the future link
    (disclosure: links to my personal site)

  15. Dan

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am

    This is a great new search experience. Does anyone know if this goes against the DMCA or are they signing deals with each publisher to show the entire website at once.

  16. Alex P

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Mostly harmless

  17. un.valley

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am

    usually not a fan of flash - but it is utilized here in a way that makes sense to me…its a great interface (especially for the masses).

    i think it has a ton of potential - but what happens if it does take off?

    wouldn’t google put some engineers on it and make this ui option available..probably with one click and the option to set as default?

    im pretty sure the key to knocking google off the high horse is better serps - not better design. but i do like this site.

  18. Harry Wang

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am

    pud,

    Are you really posting here?

    Harry “doesn’t believe it” Wang

  19. Victor Caballero

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am

    Thanks! Looks very cool.

  20. Kent Brewster

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:40 am

    splogs … millions and millions of splogs…..

  21. Kevin

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Thanks for the invite! This looks really cool and useful. I will be using it more, but my initial impression is very positive.

  22. John

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:44 am

    not impressed. other than cool UI, what’s the point? the search results were poor (why use use a search engine…), flash slows it down, can’t right-click and open link in another tab or window. searched “politics” and it returned a parked site for Politics.com with no relevant content as the first result. Not good… Google could add visual results with their superior search and crush these guys…

  23. Andrew

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:51 am

    wow this is so useless. You basically just see one result and have to click through one by one. And with the size the only thing you see is basically logo and layout. AND you gotta mouse over the actual image to see the description, which is in such a small font that you can’t even read anything except the title(exaggeration but that crap really is very small). Oh and when you finally want to go to a page you have to wait for 20 seconds while it performs animations before it opens the actual page.

    Seriously 31 million for this? Their pitch must have been extravagant.

  24. damon

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:54 am

    uhh…notes to overly funded companies doing beta’s…

    - don’t have the flash player try to connect to a debugger, duh

    - go ahead and pay a developer to create a log in form, http auth?

  25. LP

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Not bad… but search results are awful.

  26. damon

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am

    excuse me, no porn results???

    did we miss “what drove video and web adoption 101 class?”

  27. damon

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am

    even apple says that cover flow while very cool, is not used that often, just like this will be

  28. Harry Wang

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am

    @damon - lay of the submit button until you are done thinking! ;-)

    Harry “slightly less impulsive than damon” Wang

  29. King of Space

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am

    I love the idea of a visual presentation of searched links the way they do it.

    I try to search terms with french accent, but I guess they have programmers that do not know about the existence of ASCII code over 127

  30. YouYap.com

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:05 am

    It look nice but wont take over google

  31. Jeff

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Seems crazy to bank on a search UI. if this thing catches on even a little, it will take a few folks sitting in a corner somewhere at google to reproduce in no time - and then its all gone. google didn’t be the rest of the engines because they had a superior user interface

    there’s no way they’d let something as silly as the presentation layer infringe on their search marketshare. can’t believe these guys found $

  32. Yakov

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am

    searchme is a joke, don’t you understand?

  33. TechReviewDirect.com

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Wow, what a slick user interface. I love the preview feature of the sites.

    There are only 18 accounts left, so hurry up if you want one

  34. SearchSnark

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am

    Why base analysis of a search engine on one query, let alone one like ‘politics’ that Yahoo most likely hand orders? Did you even notice the cateogeries? Note how choosing ‘global warming’ or ‘democratic party’ gives very diferent results. Google can’t do this now, and probably not for some time.

  35. ljones

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am

    This is cool as hell. Is this a conflict with CoverFlow? This definitly brings forth a solid optional way to search for content.

  36. Jesse

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:38 am

    I, too, signed on to the beta because I just wanted to give it a try. But it’s quickly becoming my preference for search. The categories are really helpful too. Very well done.

  37. Angela Wilson Gyetvan

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:40 am

    The UI is very cool. Can’t wait for more results.

  38. Julian Baldwin

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Mike,

    Too late for registration, what does is it take to get a loyal TechCrunch fan into the beta at this point?

  39. Jim

    March 21st, 2008 at 11:45 am

    hate it. i like the simple ui of google and yahoo.

  40. Zach Weisman

    March 21st, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    Cool idea…as a feature. At the end of the day I will use the search engine that offers the best results…Perhaps google or yahoo could buy them like itunes / apple bought the cover flow. Perhaps they could implement their own visual / categorical search.

  41. Pranaya

    March 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Mike:

    Looks like Spacetime (http://www.spacetime.com) already achieves this. Moreover, they even show google search results in individual 3d pages that you can visually browse, etc.

  42. dale

    March 21st, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    this blow everybody away in the wow factor department, but the searchs must improve. Here is our next big search engine. maybe the MSN and Yahoo merger /acqustion isn’t so bad now because there is another compeitor in the marketplace. Something new and exciting!

  43. Joel Strellner

    March 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    I am impressed by it. It is very usable and smooth.

    I found a few really minor bugs, but those can be worked out.

    Everyone out there thinking “whats the point”. You are not looking at the big picture. This is an acquisition play. I think it’ll work too.

  44. Fabian Schonholz

    March 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    I got my invite at the beginning of the week and I have to say that the UI is great. I have not spent too much time yet with it however.

  45. Tim

    March 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    It’s fun to use but it sure is buggy…even for a beta.

  46. antje wilsch

    March 21st, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    UI is very nice, my mom especially will love it (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way- she’s very visual, doesn’t know how to ignore irrelevant summaries).

    So far what I don’t like about it, really with all search engines, is the ‘pain’ i have getting rid of posts that are irrelevant. I just noticed yahoo’s drop down trying to help me filter suggetions as I type. Doesn’t work very well but better than google on that regard.

    I search me and I get all TechCrunch results!!!

  47. damon

    March 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    to #28 … so I had more than one thought? what’s the problem with that?

    spend your time working on rawpoo to me more than a landing page, rather than complaining about people that have more than one thought…

    and if you think about responding to this, again, just work on your site

  48. damon

    March 21st, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Ouch, another thought…

    Q: Why would a search engine go beta when they admit their search results are crap?

    A: They are worried that some young snapper would put up a “cover flow search engine” first, and they would loose their ooohhhh aaahhhh chance

    probably the right decision, does not make it any less pitiful

  49. Jeff Frese

    March 21st, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    31mm in funding, f’n baffling the way VC’s operate.

  50. Julian Baldwin

    March 21st, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Update: A blog post on Facebook, a Tweet, and a beta invite.

  51. Thilo

    March 21st, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Thank you, will give it a try.

  52. DaveS

    March 21st, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Slowest search engine I’ve ever seen :(

  53. Amir

    March 21st, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    #22 - Google is a large company and is way too conservative despite all its hype to do something like this quickly enough. Searchme should worry more about the quality of their results than Google copying their UI.

    Visual search is going to be huge.
    (disclosure: am one of the founders of WebMynd so I would say that - it’s even more applicable for search history)

    If you like visual tools you should also check out the Cooliris plug-in for Firefox (great photo search and presentation) and Fichey.com (a visual StumbleUpon)

  54. Michael

    March 21st, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    You’re too good to use, Mr. Arrington.

  55. NickeyD

    March 21st, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    If you people like CoverFlow UI, then why not build one on your own ? Here’s the ajax sourcecode sample:

    http://194.95.111.244/~countze.....ImageFlow/

  56. Scabr

    March 21st, 2008 at 10:43 pm

    Searchme: Too small data base

  57. Thomas

    March 22nd, 2008 at 9:03 am

    If you want to n”see” your search results, just using the snap addon with Google gives you speed, relevance and the visualization. Sorry no album flow though. http://www.snap.com/about/shotsdownload.php

  58. Harry Wang

    March 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 am

    @48 by way of 27: Testy, testy. Apparently you don’t have much of a sense of humor. Get offline and develop your social skills. ;-)

    Harry “self deprecating” Wang

  59. David Berkowitz

    March 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Now that I’m in, I want out.

  60. Emad

    March 24th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    Very cool looking, but couldn’t anyone build this in about a week using Google’s API??? So you get Google’s excellent relevancy and searchme cool UI… Hmmm… maybe I should start working on that :)

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