"Anywhere there's an RSS feed, we consume it,
extract an image...and make it searchable," said Chase
Norlin, founder of the San Francisco-based company.
As opposed to search giant Google, which retrieves relevant
pages from billions of Web sites, Pixsy hones in on the
freshest images from publishers, Norlin said. "So you can
now explore the Web visually."
For example, visitors can click a logo of the New York Times
on the Web on Pixsy.com to see a collection of the
publisher's latest photos, which are then linked to news
stories on the publisher's Web site. People can also type in
the search box, "George Clooney," to see photos of the
Academy Award-winning actor, linked to all the latest
stories about him.
The timing is apt. Multimedia is an increasingly large part
of a reader's diet on the Web. Image search was the fastest
growing form of search on sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN
in the last year, up 91 percent total from February 2005 to
February 2006, according to a report from researcher Nielsen
NetRatings issued Monday.
Pixsy, a privately held company with four employees,
officially launched its site last July. It had difficulty
aggregating images, however, because the technology relied
on XML feeds with a limited number of partners. (Norlin
would not disclose the site's traffic.) The service now
pulls images from hundreds of RSS feeds, according to Norlin,
and that number is growing hourly, he said.
The site, which is built with AJAX technology, will collect
a thumbnail image from an RSS feed automatically and then
associate words, or metadata, with that image based on the
news or information from where it came. Pixsy then uses that
data to associate images with search terms.
Still, publishers could grumble over use of their images,
even in the form of thumbnails. Pixsy does not have
partnerships with publishers it draws from, but rather
relies on the inherent marketing push of RSS feeds. Norlin
said he believes publishers will be pleased with the
traffic.
For now, Pixsy makes money through advertising and affiliate
partnerships. For example, if an image seen on Pixsy drives
traffic to a site that sells a poster of the image, it would
collect a small fee. In the future, Norlin said, the company
envisions licensing its visual search engine to other
companies or publishers.
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