So, how good is Like.com?

November 8, 2006 By

Here, let’s try a few things and see how Like.com works.

Let’s look for these things:

Watch with square face. Worked pretty good. I loved the square dancing face.

Steel tipped shoe. Found only three results. I’d expect more.

Black dress shoe. Lots of nice results.

Diamond and garnet ring. Maryam would like this.

Silver watch. This brought back a lot of silver watches.

Pretty good, although I want a lot more choices than what they’ve given us.

The problem is it’s taken 250 servers with four processors each to do just this small subset.

Filed Under: 1
  • http://rsathya.wordpress.com/ Sathya

    Pretty interesting. I was looking for ‘Shoes with Wheels’. Impressive results.

    But as u had pointed out there is a very restrictive subset of products. For eg. I was not able to search for a ‘black slim mobile’. Think it is initially only for Jewelry, shoes , watches & handbags !

    Or am I missing something ?

  • http://rsathya.wordpress.com/ Sathya

    Pretty interesting. I was looking for ‘Shoes with Wheels’. Impressive results.

    But as u had pointed out there is a very restrictive subset of products. For eg. I was not able to search for a ‘black slim mobile’. Think it is initially only for Jewelry, shoes , watches & handbags !

    Or am I missing something ?

  • Srini

    Some comparison searches:

    Froogle:
    http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=Watch+with+square+face&btnG=Search+Froogle

    Ebay:
    http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=watch+with+square+face

    Riya does better and the likeness search is nice. Wish it was a wee bit faster (Google spoiled).

  • Srini

    Some comparison searches:

    Froogle:
    http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=Watch+with+square+face&btnG=Search+Froogle

    Ebay:
    http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=watch+with+square+face

    Riya does better and the likeness search is nice. Wish it was a wee bit faster (Google spoiled).

  • Jeremy Morton

    Try “steel toed shoe”; I think it’s the more common phrase…

  • Jeremy Morton

    Try “steel toed shoe”; I think it’s the more common phrase…

  • http://munjal.typepad.com/ Munjal Shah

    Sathya – you are right this is a restrictive set. We will add more but we felt it was important to get it working well with these before expanding.

  • http://munjal.typepad.com Munjal Shah

    Sathya – you are right this is a restrictive set. We will add more but we felt it was important to get it working well with these before expanding.

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  • http://andrewhitchcock.org/ Andrew Hitchcock

    Unfortunately, it fails at finding, the one ring or +3 brooch of invisibility.

    Andrew

  • http://andrewhitchcock.org Andrew Hitchcock

    Unfortunately, it fails at finding, the one ring or +3 brooch of invisibility.

    Andrew

  • http://www.floodle.net/ Phil

    Cross product matching would be nice, for example show handbags that “go with”* these shoes.

    * The concept of items “going with” other items is lost on me but my wife often uses it as an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe to go with her new shoes.

  • http://www.floodle.net Phil

    Cross product matching would be nice, for example show handbags that “go with”* these shoes.

    * The concept of items “going with” other items is lost on me but my wife often uses it as an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe to go with her new shoes.

  • Neal

    Sorry, this is NOT the least bit exciting or impressive. I tried over two dozen search terms for clothing items that I’ve searched for before. Eight had results – that were not even close. The rest returned no results. I finally chose a generic watch so I could do the likeness search. Color match worked well. Shape match average. Pattern not at all.

    You want to impress me, get some selection in there – men stuff – maybe some hand tools, then let me sketch an outline or submit a picture. If they can find things that way… I’ll be impressed.

  • Neal

    Sorry, this is NOT the least bit exciting or impressive. I tried over two dozen search terms for clothing items that I’ve searched for before. Eight had results – that were not even close. The rest returned no results. I finally chose a generic watch so I could do the likeness search. Color match worked well. Shape match average. Pattern not at all.

    You want to impress me, get some selection in there – men stuff – maybe some hand tools, then let me sketch an outline or submit a picture. If they can find things that way… I’ll be impressed.

  • http://www.chezimelda.com/ Alexander Straub

    Nice article. Riya have some competition on this one – London based PIXSTA launched http://www.chezimelda.com recently – a huge online shoe store browsable by image. Comparing the two, Like.com’s site is more polished and great fun (I like the celebrity section), but for a PURE shopping experience http://www.chezimelda.com is much more intuitive. It will be interesting to which one consumers go for. The speed is also more Google like!

  • http://www.chezimelda.com Alexander Straub

    Nice article. Riya have some competition on this one – London based PIXSTA launched http://www.chezimelda.com recently – a huge online shoe store browsable by image. Comparing the two, Like.com’s site is more polished and great fun (I like the celebrity section), but for a PURE shopping experience http://www.chezimelda.com is much more intuitive. It will be interesting to which one consumers go for. The speed is also more Google like!

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  • jojo

    Like.com seems to be biased towards amazon for results. This is quite lame from a consumer’s perspective since amazon is not nearly the best place for shoes. Maybe it will help Munjal and Co. to cash out to amazon since they failed in their bid to sellout to Google. Like.com is clearly positioned as a company that desperately wants to sell out to Google or amazon. Note the lack of biz model. It looks like they aren’t worried about making $ since they just want to sell out.

    Most people who buy shoes online know that Zappos.com offers the best selection (brands, styles, colors, widths – you name it) and customer service, *bar none*, and yet Zappos results are hardly represented. Zappos definitely has more matches to any kind of shoe – way more than amazon or any of the other copycat shoe sites – and yet Like.com mostly steers consumers to worse stores. Lame, lame, lame from a shoe consumer’s perspective!

    Well, good luck selling out (the second time), Munjal!

  • jojo

    Like.com seems to be biased towards amazon for results. This is quite lame from a consumer’s perspective since amazon is not nearly the best place for shoes. Maybe it will help Munjal and Co. to cash out to amazon since they failed in their bid to sellout to Google. Like.com is clearly positioned as a company that desperately wants to sell out to Google or amazon. Note the lack of biz model. It looks like they aren’t worried about making $ since they just want to sell out.

    Most people who buy shoes online know that Zappos.com offers the best selection (brands, styles, colors, widths – you name it) and customer service, *bar none*, and yet Zappos results are hardly represented. Zappos definitely has more matches to any kind of shoe – way more than amazon or any of the other copycat shoe sites – and yet Like.com mostly steers consumers to worse stores. Lame, lame, lame from a shoe consumer’s perspective!

    Well, good luck selling out (the second time), Munjal!

  • seadawn

    In my previous post ,where I liked the concept, but hate the home page (because of the lame celebrities pictured), I made a mistake.

    It’s not K fed/Brittney, it’s Brittney and Fed -Ex.

  • seadawn

    In my previous post ,where I liked the concept, but hate the home page (because of the lame celebrities pictured), I made a mistake.

    It’s not K fed/Brittney, it’s Brittney and Fed -Ex.

  • User

    I think the site would do much better if you did a ‘likeness search’ on a steel tipped shoe rather than a text search for a steel tipped shoe.

  • User

    I think the site would do much better if you did a ‘likeness search’ on a steel tipped shoe rather than a text search for a steel tipped shoe.

  • Andy

    I thought you might want to take a look at Compete.com’s blog today. There is a posting of a search engine watch that looks at the top search engines and their growth and top searches through October.

    http://blog.compete.com/index.php/2006/11/08/search-market-share-google-youtube-yahoo-msn-dogpile/

  • Andy

    I thought you might want to take a look at Compete.com’s blog today. There is a posting of a search engine watch that looks at the top search engines and their growth and top searches through October.

    http://blog.compete.com/index.php/2006/11/08/search-market-share-google-youtube-yahoo-msn-dogpile/

  • Alvin

    Three words: Waste of time

  • Alvin

    Three words: Waste of time

  • http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Neuromancer

    Seems to have problems on IE

    http://www.like.com/search?btnSearch=shoes&searchText=black%20high%20heels

    works fine in ff but not in ie now I think the proportion of the target females wont intsall nonstandard browsers.

  • http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Neuromancer

    Seems to have problems on IE

    http://www.like.com/search?btnSearch=shoes&searchText=black%20high%20heels

    works fine in ff but not in ie now I think the proportion of the target females wont intsall nonstandard browsers.

  • http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Neuromancer

    Oh I Sould say I have a couple female clients with a ton’e of products targeted at a mostly female audiance how do i get their products on there is it just a US thing?

  • http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Neuromancer

    Oh I Sould say I have a couple female clients with a ton’e of products targeted at a mostly female audiance how do i get their products on there is it just a US thing?

  • http://rsathya.wordpress.com/ Sathya

    @Munjal (4) – Tx for the update. looking forward to ur next releases :)

  • http://rsathya.wordpress.com/ Sathya

    @Munjal (4) – Tx for the update. looking forward to ur next releases :)

  • http://timhibbard.com/wherestim/ Tim Hibbard

    Not good enough to resolve with out the www.
    http://like.com = Cannot find server

  • http://timhibbard.com/wherestim/ Tim Hibbard

    Not good enough to resolve with out the www.
    http://like.com = Cannot find server

  • http://charlielive.wordpress.com/ charlielive

    I’ve just started a wordpress hosted blog site and have been looking for some facial recognition software. The http://www.polarrose.com/ website also seems to hold promise. Right now it seems to be a powerpoint being developed into a beta. Difficult software to develop. Now that I’m aware of this

    I have a project under development that could really use visual recognition (of badly scanned personal photos) and tie it into a semantic analysis/mapping/social networks timeline based around MIT’s SIMILE (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/) with lots of AJAX-ATLAS-LINQ-PYTHON-NAME-YOUR-OOP action going on to encourage visitor interaction and participation.

    If I may be so bold as to add that I’ve officially dumped/blogged my girlfriend for Dee Dee Walsh. I know you danced on tables with her at GeekFest. We have a deeper relationship where jealousy doesn’t exist. She just tells me what to do and I do it. Simple.

    I also shamelessly name-dropped. Chosing Robert Scoble, Dee Dee Walsh, Jonathan Zuck and Tom Button to link together in my “first” blog is either a shameless commercial plug or hanging out way too long with the developer marketing teams.

    No link included out of total respect. If I haven’t grabbed your interest yet…

  • http://charlielive.wordpress.com/ charlielive

    I’ve just started a wordpress hosted blog site and have been looking for some facial recognition software. The http://www.polarrose.com/ website also seems to hold promise. Right now it seems to be a powerpoint being developed into a beta. Difficult software to develop. Now that I’m aware of this

    I have a project under development that could really use visual recognition (of badly scanned personal photos) and tie it into a semantic analysis/mapping/social networks timeline based around MIT’s SIMILE (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/) with lots of AJAX-ATLAS-LINQ-PYTHON-NAME-YOUR-OOP action going on to encourage visitor interaction and participation.

    If I may be so bold as to add that I’ve officially dumped/blogged my girlfriend for Dee Dee Walsh. I know you danced on tables with her at GeekFest. We have a deeper relationship where jealousy doesn’t exist. She just tells me what to do and I do it. Simple.

    I also shamelessly name-dropped. Chosing Robert Scoble, Dee Dee Walsh, Jonathan Zuck and Tom Button to link together in my “first” blog is either a shameless commercial plug or hanging out way too long with the developer marketing teams.

    No link included out of total respect. If I haven’t grabbed your interest yet…

  • http://farhanahmed.com/blog farhan

    by the way, Vista has RTMd. check out the windows vista blog. jim allchin says it in two words.

  • http://farhanahmed.com/blog farhan

    by the way, Vista has RTMd. check out the windows vista blog. jim allchin says it in two words.

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  • http://andybeard.eu AndyBeard

    @ Jojo

    Note the lack of biz model. It looks like they aren’t worried about making $ since they just want to sell out.

    Like.com actually oozes financial model. All the products listed earn revenue. It takes time to add additional resources for increased product range and price comparrison, so it seems they have opted for the easiest to integrate (and the ones that are guaranteed to pay on time).

    My own opinion of the value of the service was enhanced when I showed my wife it.

    Now while she didn’t buy anything (buying from the US and shipping to Europe is not ideal), she did spend a couple of hours just shopping for ideas.

    Like.com makes an ideal “window shopping” environment and the amount of products is always likely to increase in both depth and width.

  • http://andybeard.eu Andy Beard

    @ Jojo

    Note the lack of biz model. It looks like they aren’t worried about making $ since they just want to sell out.

    Like.com actually oozes financial model. All the products listed earn revenue. It takes time to add additional resources for increased product range and price comparrison, so it seems they have opted for the easiest to integrate (and the ones that are guaranteed to pay on time).

    My own opinion of the value of the service was enhanced when I showed my wife it.

    Now while she didn’t buy anything (buying from the US and shipping to Europe is not ideal), she did spend a couple of hours just shopping for ideas.

    Like.com makes an ideal “window shopping” environment and the amount of products is always likely to increase in both depth and width.

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  • http://www.psynixis.com/blog/ Simon Brocklehurst

    How good is Like.com? I’ve put my analysis on my blog:

    http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2006/11/09/likecom-can-you-find-stuff-you-like/

  • http://www.psynixis.com/blog/ Simon Brocklehurst

    How good is Like.com? I’ve put my analysis on my blog:

    http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2006/11/09/likecom-can-you-find-stuff-you-like/

  • http://timhibbard.com/wherestim/ Tim Hibbard

    I see that http://like.com now resolves like it should.

  • http://timhibbard.com/wherestim/ Tim Hibbard

    I see that http://like.com now resolves like it should.