Viewzi May Finally Have Won Me Over to Visual Search
05/10/2008, 3 months 1 week ago
Apparently, Viewzi had its private beta launch when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, because how I missed it, I have no idea. I've never been a big fan of visual search, but I'm always willing to give it a try, going in with the expectation that I'll be doing a lot of eye-rolling. Viewzi was a pleasant surprise.
Viewzi is a new way of looking at visual search: it realizes that not all searches are the same. Searching for blog posts isn't the same as searching for weather forecasts or online shopping or books or music or videos. In addition, not everyone has the same preferences when it comes to how they'd like to view things for each type of search. One person may like a plain vanilla search for blogs, while another might like screenshots, and a third might like thumbnails for results aggregated across more than one search engine. Viewzi recognizes this, and gives the user several different methods of visual search, allowing you to easily customize your search without being "stuck" in one method.
The site works with all recent browsers (they list IE 7, Safari, and Firefox, although I used Camino for taking screenshots, and had no issues at all), and imagines how you might like to see more types of searches than you can probably think up right now. There are views designed to see search results as web screenshots, a basic photo view, a video viewer, basic text results for those who'd like to see the old-fashioned type of search, one with screenshot thumbnails aggregating results from four different search engines, a Reuters News View, one designed for shopping, a special photo view for celebrities as well as one for shopping for books on Amazon, a weather viewer (helpful if you are searching for information before traveling), and MP3 viewer, and (probably a direct kissing up for coverage) TechCrunch viewer, which allows you to search for information directly on TechCrunch.
The nicest thing about Viewzi is that it doesn't assume how you want to see results. My past experience with visual search engines gave me few options for customizing my search experience, and in this space, aesthetics are everything; no two people are going to like the same format for displaying results. The design in every view is clean and user-friendly, and required no extra time to get going. Each view is clearly labeled with a sample screenshot to give you an idea of what you'll be looking at, and the AJAX interface is slick.
I never expected to say this, but Viewzi is the one visual search I can see myself switching to. All I need now is a Viewzi toolbar.
We have invites! Thanks to Giovanni of Viewzi, we have 100 invites for Profy readers! Just enter "Profy" for your invite code.
Viewzi Webshot View:
Viewzi 4 Sources View:
Viewzi Simple Text View:
Cyndy,
Thanks for having a peek. We’re glad you like it!
We’re still in private beta, but your readers can get in to have a look by using “profy” as their referral code. This is good for the first few hundred through the door. Of course, with this being a beta, we’d like to hear about their experience so we can make the product even better.
Have a good one!
-giovanni
Nice write up. At first glance it seems a lot like the SearchMe site that I checked out from Techcrunch’s post a while back (which I believe is also in beta), but I did like what they had put together. Would be interesting to see both of these side by side to compare (interesting approach with the multiple views). I’ll go try to get a peek at the beta thanks to giovanni’s offer for the referral code. That is if there’s still any left by the time I get there
@Giovanni Thank you for the invites!
@Mk SearchMe is similar only in that it uses screenshots. It has more features (you can search within a page, for example), but only allows you the one possible view. My biggest problem with these visual search engines has been that they don’t give you options for how you want to view results; SearchMe is a great example. The screenshots are HUGE but if you are searching for a person, for example, and their top result in SearchMe is something completely inappropriate and you are at work or have kids around, it’s hard to hide it. If you aren’t sure what you are going to get, with Viewzi you can switch to straight text or use the 4 Sources view, which has much smaller screenshots. I don’t like surprises, can you tell?