MySpace has introduced a new image search feature to its integrated search engine, allowing users to quickly search through photos shared by their friends and the MySpace community. While MySpace did not officially announce the new feature, the company has confirmed that it recently went live, and indexes around 3 billion of the site’s 7 billion photos. The addition reflects MySpace’s apparently increasing focus on its search engine, which also includes the site’s video and music content along with a Google-powered web search.
Users are given the option to search through photos their friends have shared, those with viewing rights set to ‘public’ by other MySpace users, or images on Photobucket, which was acquired by MySpace’s parent company in 2007. MySpace says that all results are shown through a “social lense”, which means that the engine pays attention to keywords in your profile and who your friends are to try to generate the most relevant results.
It’s a neat feature and one that I’m sure will improve over time, but in its current form MySpace Image Search is a little weird. While a search for “San Francisco” on Flickr or Google Image Search will generally yield city-scapes or famous landmarks, most of the results on MySpace feature people that you don’t know, with the famous landmarks in the background. Searches for celebrities like ‘Lil Wayne‘ tend to fare better, but you’ll still wind up with a number of MySpace users who have photographed themselves dressed up as the person you searched for. Like I said, it’s a little weird – though it can come in handy when you’re only concerned with looking through your friends’ photos.
Much of the problem stems from the fact that Image Search relies on each photo’s meta-information, which includes tags and captions (about 4 billion of MySpace images don’t have any of this information, so they aren’t included in the index). Unfortunately, many of the photos on the social network are either poorly tagged or feature captions that are not particularly descriptive, which can lead to mixed results. MySpace wouldn’t comment on its future plans to improve the technology, but I suspect they’re working on some kind of image recognition engine that can provide more relevant results.
We should note that Facebook has an image catalog of well over 10 billion photos (trumping MySpace’s by a significant margin), but the site’s setup with segmented networks and granular privacy settings probably isn’t conducive to a site-wide search.
welcome to months ago
hey techcrunch – ddi you notice that twitter is down for mainteance?? another front-page story for you!
And I care about seeing these photos vs a Google image search…why?
You are a pedophile and want to see some kids myspace photos without having to click around lots of different links and profiles.
Is privacy dead completely in our society? How many of the kids in myspace know what really “public” means when they add the photos to myspace. may be i am old school.
“Is privacy dead completely in our society?”
When it comes to socializing online, the term privacy is becoming less and less. If you want a complete privacy, delete tour account and start livin in a cave.
so this is how they’re going to play it
This seems like a good feature.
a
maybe good feature but i am not sure how many folks that would want their photos to be up for public search.
I think it’s still in beta testing..however google is still the best.
Wov, its a cool future, like google does with identifying face in their image search ..
Jason Kincaid, you should ask Myspace how they come up with these new features because their contact form to send them feature requests has been not working for months. Try it yourself. go to myspace.com,click on “contact myspace” at the bottom of the page, click on “OTHER” and “FEATURE SUGGESTION” then click “submit” and the page just reloads, so Myspace haven’t been getting suggestions for months. No wonder facebook is nearly beating Myspace.
ok
as not being a myspace user myself, i tried it out with some test terms, didnt get anything remotely good.
1. boobs
2. tits
3. jailbait
4. ass
Than i got bored.
I swear, Tech Crunch readers are the most bitchiest of bitches I’ve ever heard pontificate! You people bore the hell out of me with your constant complaining.
Do you not have any friends up There?
MySpace needs to go buy some image searching company. The technology that they have sucks.
S
Its a good feature.It will very useful for photo lovers.
And , how about MySpace has 3 AdSense search boxes now on their site..lol
Try finding a free and useful website that doesn’t have any ads on it.
cool~
hey was up peps my names jojo just sayn hi …. hi ok bi l.o.l a.k.a jojo