Facial recognition service Riya will shut down on August 21, 2009, says founder Munjal Shah in an email to users this morning. We are adding it to the TechCrunch DeadPool.
This was one of the original services that defined the early Web 2.0 movement. We first covered it, then known as Ojos, four years ago. The service changed its name to Riya before launching at a party, yes, in my back yard. Here’s our fist full overview of the Riya product, which helped users by auto-recognizing friends in photos and tagging them.
The company came close to selling to Google, but the deal never closed. And eventually the company refocused its efforts on visual search ecommerce (and is still going strong at like.com).
The email is below. Thanks for the tip, Orli.
Michael u hv been confirming on your kiss of death since early evening…
Do u have more in the offing…? 
not right now.
Munjal Shah manufactured that piece of news about ‘getting acquired by Google’. Not the best person to work with.
you hold grudges a long time, I see.
I never trust a guy who doesn’t shake hands.
i never used it.was that useful?
Never heard of the service but it’s always sad to see a service close down.
The TRUTH behind Riya…
http://cornell....join-a-startup/
A real loss – I’m really sad that Riya didn’t make it -after the awesome start that Tara helped create it as well as the shopping “engine”, it was a fantastic service.
Why didn’t the tech get licensed to the Apple’s, Picasa’s and Photobucket though?
A big concern for many (including me) is that they announce the closure with no image export facilities – with a suggestive note at the bottom of the email that they MIGHT be able to help.
I sincerely hope they honour this. Their credibility remains very high with those people I know who also use the service.
Best wishes to all the guys for their future plans though.
awwe. relax man, y emotional?? Market forces these are… y don’t u cover on Asian scene these days. … There is less deadpooling here….:) N thr r tonnes of products to look at you know…
Good point man… I would like to know more about what companies throughout Asia are doing because they innovate a lot and we could always learn a thing or two from other people and cultures.
Hope you take it into consideration Michael Arrington. Thanks!
Yeh, they are innovating tons of new ways to more efficiently copy the rest of the world cheaply.
You can check out about the Indian startups at
http://www.hoti...ianstartups.com
looks like people really are having trouble monetizing photo sites.
I am going to miss Riya a lot
But what gonna happen to thousands of my photos over there?
same here. I am also wondering about those huge collection of photos… sad, but again, its business.
Moral of the story; Don’t launch at Mike Arrington’s, its a bad omen!
Sorry guys, that is business.
http://www.nichea.info
I wish Munjal and the rest of the team the best and hope that their Facial recognition technology can somehow make it out to the rest of the world as an open source project. Keep it up guys and do it again. We will always support you!
Was there anybody left on the payroll? Seems like it was orphaned a while ago and just running on servers? Now they have euthanized Riya so they don’t have to support it. This seems like having the funeral about a year or two (since like.com started) after riya.com already died.
Está bueno
no está malo
like.com going strong? Their traffic is down 25% over the last 3 months…arrington should check his facts.
It looks like Like.com peaked in 2006.
http://www.goog...ends?q=like.com
http://www.alex...teinfo/like.com
this probably tells a better story. Munjal is good at BSing VCs out of their money!
Hmm, that’s really sad..
this is the first time I heard about riya.com. It’s a sad news for Riya Friends anyway.
Fortunately there’s polarrose.com and an app on Facebook. Riya never really worked anyway.
Polar Rose? Phullleeeaaasssse. A bit behind in their algos. Real face recognition is much harder and Riya/Like.com got it right for a web/consumer based service. (doesn’t mean there is a business model)
How does Polar Rose make money exactly.
It is a waste of time, knowledge and money to develop such application for social web use. I can’t really see of how they would make money out of it. Computer vision technology (including face recognition) is big in industrial automation and this is where anyone in this area should target.
why don’t they sell their assets to someone rather than just shutting down?
good qn but who wants to buy?
Like.com is next – everything Munjal does is a hyped piece of crap that loses investor money.
Of all the recent deadpool news (seems to be plenty in past few days, are they going to have a TechDeadCrunch50 by the side?), this one doesn’t sadden me as much, because the core technology is being used in Like.com and that’s hot! Its sad when an entrepreneur throws the innovation!
Tara was all about Tara, not Riya.
Riya could not tell the difference between a lamp, a beer can and a human.
I see a trend, get profiled on techcrunch and 2 years later get sent to deadpool.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation. It’s more like “Be a startup, 2 years later get sent to deadpool”. “TechCrunch profiles startups.”
If it becomes successful, it’s not really a startup anymore. It’s a business.
Another example of a company that had almost no shot at success.
I put a lot of time into beta testing Riya. I’m glad they’ve found success with like.com
How said like.com is successful? They havent made a profit and their traffic is down.
Face-book
That’s where the biggest database is right now.
It would be interesting to see what they do with that database.
I can think of several services that could turn that database into a goldmine but it does require that the users opt in on those services.
Like.com is next…
Here’s a re-posted from another TC story about Like’s third round of funding. Looks like they aren’t doing nearly as well as Michael wants us to believe:
Anonymous – March 1st, 2009 at 1:38 pm PST
It’s a real shame… Like.com had a good model, a solid plan, a smart exec team… and then came the market downturn.
Over the last few months, Munjal has fired the marketing teams, the sales team and the biz dev teams in a desperate attempt to slow the rapid hemorrhage of cash. (How do you monetize a site after cutting loose the people driving the revenue?).
Despite cutting the headcount from 40 down to 20, rumor has it that the burn rate is still close to $3 million per month with revenues in the tens of thousands and an ever-shrinking market share.
It’s just a matter of time before Peter Rip and company hand Mr. Shah his walking papers, but will it be in time to salvage some portion of their investment? Probably not.
As I said, a real shame…