Riya launched Like.com, a visual search engine in the year 2006. Image search in its true spirit should be about the image only. Most image search engines today rely on additional tags and meta data to refine their image searches. Its more like feeling for a color with your eyes closed.
Riya, having accomplished at Facial Recognition, launched the Like.com engine as a true visual tool that used the image content along with the meta data to describe the image. A set of 10,000 plus variables are used to define the many details in an image as a digital signature. The signature is also mapped to the keywords that get associated with the image. The end result is a mapping from keywords to images factoring in the actual content in the image.
Carsten from SEJ had reviewed Like.com when it was launched. The search is tailored towards shopping, jewelery, clothing and other accessories. While truly global image search is as such absent, the technology does provide a path to image search purely driven by content.
There’s a load of information for entrepreneurs to have from the blog of Like.com’s CEO Munjal Shah. Tid-bits from them reveal that company paid $1,00,000 for the domain name and was once in talks with Google.
The potential for such technology is indeed immense and with the current social trends online, image recognition is a happening avenue.
