Riya reborn is really cool way to search
OK, so, what’s the 250 machines for?
A better way to find stuff. A way better way.
Just don’t tell Maryam, OK?
Why not?
Well, it’s the first time you can search for “red strappy shoes” and have every type of shoe show up VISUALLY.
This is cool stuff.
It’s called Like.com.
I interviewed Munjal Shah, Riya’s CEO and here’s the interview. Here’s a demo of Like.com. They are both videos published to my ScobleShow video blog.
More shortly.
I hear that Like.com will be turned on shortly. Like.com is up now.
This is a lot of fun.
Some stories about Like.com.
1) The URL cost him $100,000. In the interview he explains how they bought it. It involved finding the guy who owned it, jumping a fence, and leaving a bottle of wine with a note on it (he wouldn’t answer his email).
2) Riya was pretty close to being sold to Google. If it had been, they never would have worked on this search engine. So, by getting turned down by Google Riya came back with a much better business.
3) Just the jewelry set takes 20GB of RAM.
4) Munjal still believes in blogs, but for this launch Riya talked with fashion bloggers, and journalists outside the tech world like at People magazine. Why? Well, this site — in its current incarnation — will be most interesting to women and non-geeks. If you’ve looked at who participates here, it’s heavily male.
5) Why not keep working on face detection? Because they learned through user testing that they’d never be able to make it good enough. They found that by focusing on visual image searches they can get a much more satisfied user base.
What do you think? It is the most interesting search experiences I’ve had since I first laid my eyes on Google about eight years ago.
UPDATE: Liz Gannes of GigaOm has a report too, but isn’t as impressed. “I do think this is a cool idea but it’s not dazzlingly good yet.”
UPDATE 2: Dan Farber has a report too. So does Rafe Needleman over on his new Webware blog.
UPDATE 3: Andre Ribeirinho writes “What I like most about Like is that being a shopping comparison site they are targetting a specific target, Women and pursuing a market worth of $15-$30B.”
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November 8th, 2006 at 1:13 am
[...] Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 1:43 am
[...] Just read on Robert Scoble’s blog about the new Riya, Like.com. The video he put up shows some amazing technology. This looks like is going to be killer. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 3:02 am
[...] People talking: Scoble, Techcrunch, GigaOm, Dan Farber, Webware. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 3:11 am
[...] Like Visual Search has just launched with much fanfare - it’s so cool, it even gets an ‘alpha’ label. Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington have provided us with the best coverage, with Robert providing two podcasts for your viewing pleasure. Other coverage here. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 3:22 am
“Why not keep working on face detection? Because they learned through user testing that they’d never be able to make it good enough.”
We’ve had this discussion in the past, this is an unsolvable problem.
But the early Riya was in a good niche when it was a nice desktop app for family and friends. The point was that the set of photos made best suited for photo comparison and face detection accuracy.
Now, this website looks like one of the thousands comparison shops out there.
Also, drilling by color for instance is nice, but that’s not something Amazon and the likes cannot do overnight.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:28 am
Stephane: really? If they can do it overnight I’d like to see them do it. I seriously doubt they’ll be able to pull it off.
Why not? For the same reason that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (and everyone else) hasn’t been able to compete with YouTube.
Doing software is a lot harder than you make it sound. I hear engineers brag the way you do all the time.
Everytime I hear this kind of horseshit I say “go ahead and build it overnight then.”
It never happens.
Why is that?
November 8th, 2006 at 3:45 am
1. Thanks for commenting on my blog. I’m honored.
2. I think Like.com is a GREAT thing for visual shopping. Recently I was looking for a watch that looked like the Nixon that Hiro Nakamura wears on Heroes, but I also wanted to be atomic-clock-synchronized and solar powered. I eventually found it through Froogle, but it might have been faster using a slightly more developed version of Like.com.
Btw, the watch I eventually settled on was a Casio WV300DA-7B.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:51 am
I just watched your video interview about Like.com.
1. That watch search was just like the one I did to take the screenshot for my blog.
2. That guy in the video has the same Firefox Mac theme I do.
3. That guy’s toolbar has the same programs running that I do.
So many coincidences…
November 8th, 2006 at 3:52 am
4. And of course, we have the same computer.
(sorry for triple posting)
November 8th, 2006 at 3:55 am
I just read the articles about Like.com. I do not understand the hype, two PhD’s out of London have come up with the largest browsable shoe index in the world several months ago. It is called ChezImelda. The site is very fast and searches for look alike, it has in addition to like.com a very fast interface… lot’s of fun to use
November 8th, 2006 at 3:57 am
[...] Video Interview with Riya’s CEO Munjal Shah at Scobleizer [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 4:05 am
[...] Update: Scoble give us much more details here like the $100.000 paid for the domain and the 250 servers needed just for the current setup. Plus some videos too. blog tags:Entrepreneurship like riya women technorati:Entrepreneurship, like, riya, women [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 4:21 am
Before you jump on your high horses, let me correct myself. Amazon and any online merchant can build it overnight by looking up the color in the __textual__ metadata. In other words, it’s a metadata quality problem, not a visual problem.
What Riya is trying to build is a new form of metadata that surpasses the textual metadata. It unfortunately remains to be proved that such metadata and associated retrieval system is an order of magnitude better, from a quality perspective and from a user experience perspective. And that it’s worth paying 250 servers in the long run…
In fact, what Riya is doing first apparently, correct me if I am wrong, is real-time search.
November 8th, 2006 at 4:21 am
So many Web 2.0 sites launch with no focus on monetization. Like.com is a refreshing change.
The only way to build this technology overnight will be to buy the company. It would certainly add a totally new aspect to Froogle.
How much of their IP is protected?
November 8th, 2006 at 4:46 am
Interesting concept - but as a bloke I must say I liked the facial recognition much more :P
November 8th, 2006 at 5:11 am
Nice concept!
November 8th, 2006 at 5:33 am
Great concept in a hugely exciting space. They are not alone though, London based startup Pixsta will be their competition it seems - they launched their visual shoe store http://www.chezimelda.com href=www.chezimelda.com>Chez Imelda in beta and are racing up the Alexa Rankings
November 8th, 2006 at 7:23 am
[...] Anyway Scoble has a few titbits: Some stories about Like.com. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 7:44 am
[...] Qui c’è un breve video illustrativo, mentre su scobleizer.com c’è qualche prova del nuovo strumento. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am
A year ago I was skeptical of Riya based on my past experience at AltaVista.
Now I think Riya has a much better chance of success focusing on the fashion market because “likeness” is OK, exact matches are not necessary. Secondly, the Cost Per Click (CPC) business model will be much more effective than consumer based advertising. That addresses the two concerns I had initially.
Sometimes technology people get all wound up about the technology. It is not about the technology…it is about the problem it solves. I wrote a blog on this today. http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/11/riya_tries_agai.html
November 8th, 2006 at 8:35 am
All they need now is a deal with TIVO and maybe Amazon, to make possible pointing out something in a show and have a ‘Buy this’ button come up automatically.
TV industry people are looking at doing it manually, but with Riya technology, it might be more cost effective. TWIM 26 talked about it.
For myself, I liked the face recognition idea better. It feels a bit strange to be actively dropped as a target audience. Usually, I just never make it into one.
November 8th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Ok, great concept.
But what a craptastic home page (IMO).
K fed/ brittney, Tyra banks,paris hilton, tom cruise?
November 8th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Web 2.0 Summit: Riya Launches Like.com
Facial recognition? Feh! Try fashion recognition. I suppose the idea is that the latter tack will aid in some financial …
November 8th, 2006 at 10:21 am
[...] Visual search company Riya have unveiled Like.com a visual search shopping portal at present limited to high fashion items which is the talk of the blogosphere. Riya.com itself was impressive enough with its facial recognition technology, but Like.com offers shows several improvements. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 10:56 am
[...] Turn off javascript and try to do a search on the newly launched Like.com (more on Like.com: Scoble, TechCrunch. What do you get? Nothing, that’s what. This is a move sure to fire up accessibility advocates everywhere. You may say “But who really ever turns off javascript?”, well I say why on earth do you need to write a series of javascript functions, have 15 javascript file includes, and wire up event handlers to submit your search form? Why not keep it simple and let HTML and HTTP do a little work for you? [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I agree with most of your points, but while they are targetting women, I am curious if they are actually going to MARKET to women… right now, the tech bloggers are going to send a traffic spike, but probably not help revenue one bit… http://www.livedigitally.com/2006/11/08/likecom-great-concept-if-they-can-market-it/
November 8th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Robert:
I’m curious how two people I consider pretty smart about these things — yourself and Greg Linden of Findory/Amazon (Geeking with Greg) — can have such differing opinions on Riya. You seem to think it’s great. Greg thinks its a farce.
My guess is the truth is somewhere in between.
November 8th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Matt: I just read Greg’s blog post over here: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/riya-vaporware-and-hard-problems.html
I don’t see where he disagrees with me.
By the way, Munjal told me they did user testing with HAND PICKED FACES and that the user testing only gave it a 3.2 out of 5 rating.
It wasn’t that the algorithm isn’t good enough, it’s that there was absolutely no way to meet the human expectations that were being placed on it.
November 8th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
[...] That being said, I happened to open my RSS feed reader and saw two posts from tech blogger Robert Scoble talking about a new search engine that’s just gone live called Like.com. He, too, is posting late it seems. Like.com is a "visual" search engine that lets you search for products based on appearance. Scoble is referencing some posts from TechCrunch about the product as well. [...]
November 8th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
[...] Ahora, ¿que fue lo genial de la estrategia de comunicación? simple, eligió presentar el producto en un evento SOLO a un par de referentes en la blogosfera. [...]
November 9th, 2006 at 8:44 am
[...] * Video Interview with Riya’s CEO Munjal Shah at Scobleizer [...]
November 9th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
[...] 1) Line up a video interview with Robert Scoble on ScobleShow. 2) While you’re at it, do a demo for ScobleShow. 3) Get a TechCrunch profile of your new product to show up the day of the launch. 4) Have Scoble plug the demo, interview and TechCrunch writeup on Scobleizer.com. [...]
November 9th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
[...] Robert Scoble has a good starting point for more info on this, and he has an interview with the founder, and a product demo. [...]
November 12th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Check http://www.imgseek.net/ for an opensource desktop application with content based image search and its server side version: http://server.imgseek.net/ (may be interesting for those that want to integrate visual search into their website or application)
November 12th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
[...] There has been lots of talk about like.com over the past week or so. I can see why. It’s using some flashy, fancy image-search technology and sounds like a really good idea. Love those shoes you saw Lindsay Lohan wearing? Head on over to like.com and find some shoes just like them. Great in theory. The reality, though, leaves much to be desired. [...]
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:28 am
hi riya my name is irshad and i am very big fan i had sawn oyurs each and every movie please reply me
January 15th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Hi! Very nice site! Thanks you very much! LKf3mhgLWdvM
February 29th, 2008 at 3:56 am
[...] Munjal Shah’s blog | Scoble’s coverage | Techcrunch’s [...]