Japanese video search engine Fooooo.com has expanded into the International scene with new video search versions in English, Russian, Chinese and French.
According to Motoko Hunt of Multi-Lingual Search, Foooo launched its beta version in March of 2007 and now searches over 28 million videos from sites such as YouTube.com, Google Video, DailyMotion and Ask.jp Video.
I tried some searches on Fooooo and found the results not to be as relevant as hoped. Judging from the search results, it seems that tags may not be as important of a part of the algorithm as description, which may lead to this.
Of course, when one thinks of Japan and the word “Fooooo” the first thing that should come to mind is “Hard Gay” Razon Ramon Sumitani, a Japanese television superstar and comedian whose trademark catch phrase is “Fooooo!” (which had to be influencial to the naming of this video search engine).
Actually, HG Sumitani was so upset by his trademark howl being used by another search engine, Yahoo! Japan, that he once invaded their offices to make sure they used him in one of their commercials:
Ironically, a search on Fooooo.com for ‘Hard Gay’ delivers only limited relevant results. The results for Hard Gay Sumitani, however, are a bit more relevant.
