Spezify

After posting about finding "new vectors" for competition in search yesterday, I thought it would be worth calling out my favorite new search service, called Spezify. I haven't really dug in to figure out who is behind this service and what they are doing that is new and different in terms of the results they generate. The thing I love about Spezify is the way it displays the results. Here is the results page for Obama:

Obama spezify

As many pointed out in the comments to my post yesterday, there is still plenty of innovation possible in search. Spezify is but one example, but it's a fun one.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Comments (Archived):

  1. Rex Hammock

    Wow. Great find, Fred. It’s certainly the most entertaining search service I’ve seen lately. Of course, I started out with an ego search and it was like a montage of my online life, including photos where I didn’t even know I’ve been tagged.

  2. Alex Popescu

    I’ve found it couple of weeks back and played with it a bit. What I have found interesting is that the UI works pretty well for searches related to news like information, but trying to use it for research like searches was not so efficient.The puzzle-like UI is refreshing at first, but I’m not very sure how productive it is. Images are easier to catch your attention and so you’ll not be able to quickly get to the most relevant information.The one thing I’m not sure about is that if behind Spezify there’s a real search engine or if it is just a search aggregator.

    1. Alex Popescu

      I’ve updated my tumblr link to Spezify (http://bit.ly/16p9Kr) to point to this post too, as I’m pretty sure it will generate some interesting comments.

  3. terrycojones

    Agreed, that’s nice. It has a sentimental quality too: reminds me of an old-fashioned scrap-book.

    1. fredwilson

      Its great for ‘ego searches’. But I like it for all kinds of people searches

    2. fredwilson

      Its great for ‘ego searches’. But I like it for all kinds of people searches

  4. Mark Essel

    Yeah I had some fun with this, I should huck it into the frankensearch tool I play with. Thanks for the reminder Fred. Agh it’s not playing nice with the tag arguments, debugging later now it’s too gorgeous to be indoors. Enjoy all.

  5. andrewwatson

    I like how twitter results show up in the mix and even include the person’s avatar. I did a search for Sesame Street and it was really interesting the variety of results that came up.It’s not clear how the results are organized, though (more relevant towards the center?) Also, the Flash interface means no mobile (well, iPhone anyway) usage which is a big problem for me.I wonder if their search results are copyrighted like Wolphram Alpha’s are… that drives me crazy.

  6. philiphotchkiss

    I agree, lot’s of innovation opportunity in search. Spezify is definitely “fun” search–there’s a niche there but I think services like this will be at the far end of the tail.

  7. Farhan Lalji

    Spezify is fun when you’re looking for entertainment, images, video etc. But when you’re searching for which NBA player lead the league in assists, or what the share price is for MSFT, hotels in Slovenia or other search queries not so much. IMHO vertical search is difficult to get enough traction to make it worth the effort. What we need is a search engine that knows when you want to do an entertainment search, when you’re doing research etc. and adjusts the interaction accordingly.

    1. fredwilson

      There’s an innovation right there. Modify the way results are laid out based on what you are searching for

    2. fredwilson

      There’s an innovation right there. Modify the way results are laid out based on what you are searching for

      1. Farhan Lalji

        Surely they can tell query intent and modify layout based on that though? Knowing how to change the lay out to get results presented in a way I want based on my query at the time is a bit of a geek but not masses friendly way of doing search.

  8. Alexis van Dam

    In my opinion visualization is crucial in today’s information society. Where Google is master in fast search results with a simple layout. Spezify is equally simple but delivers visual and dynamic results and uses several social media services. I have reviewed Spezify in a blogpost, please see: http://tinyurl.com/pgkvqm

  9. Alexis van Dam

    In my opinion visualization is crucial in today’s information society. Where Google is master in fast search results with a simple layout. Spezify is equally simple but delivers visual and dynamic results and uses several social media services. I have reviewed Spezify in a blogpost, please see: http://tinyurl.com/pgkvqm

  10. kidmercury

    the semantic algorithm looks like it’s in need of improvement, i don’t see any association with satan in the obama example you gave.visual search is going to have to find a way to cross the chasm, i.e. make it appeal to the mainstream. so i think this thing will be all about marketing. can they find the right niche to target, IMHO that is the key question.

    1. Aaron Klein

      I don’t always agree with you, but I die laughing at your comments. You should do standup.

    2. Steve

      Look harder, Kid. Look harder.Bill, Dick, and the rest of the gang in the bunker.

    3. fredwilson

      You crack me up kid.

    4. fredwilson

      You crack me up kid.

  11. rich caccappolo

    reminds me the visual meta search service called Search Crystal that was up for the last couple of years, but seems to have been taken down – here is an explanation of what it washttp://googlesystem.blogspo…I found it to be a good source for finding images across search engines

    1. fredwilson

      Oh yeah. I remember that one.

    2. fredwilson

      Oh yeah. I remember that one.

  12. Kevin Cimring

    Spezify has nice “eye candy” appeal for entertainment value, but is not optimal for serious research. It’s engaging at first but then becomes a little tedious to dance around the page looking for relevant results which are thrown in amongst images.One thing is sure though – visual search like Spezify certainly has its merits and I think there will be a lot more coming in this space.On that note, whatever happened to SearchMe – the Sequoia-backed search engine that had “cover flow” type screenshots of search results? When I type the URL http://www.searchme.com it takes me to GOOG’s homepage. TechCrunch reported recently that they were seeking further funding (have reportedly raised $44million to date), alternatively a buyer. It seems they have found neither (unless Google has already acquired them in a quick transaction) and seem to be offline for the moment.

    1. fredwilson

      Hmm. Good question about searchme

    2. fredwilson

      Hmm. Good question about searchme

  13. Albert R

    I’m sorry to say it, but this just annoys me. I tried searching for a keyword related to a current event [laguardia], but no results came up about the bomb scare, let alone the new suspect. Okay, so current events is not its forté. How about [descartes]? I don’t have to wait sooo long on Google for the results to come up, and then sort my way through the disorganization and pictures to find the wikipedia article. Why do I need pictures? If I were looking for pictures, I would have searched on Google Images. Now, a few pictures could be helpful, but when most of the results are the same picture over and over again, it gets annoying.Innovation is still possible, but I don’t think this is a productive or logical way to go about it.

    1. Kevin Cimring

      Yep.

  14. aanwar

    It sort of reminds me of the way Tumblr works its search function.

    1. fredwilson

      Yes. I was saying that exact thing to my friend mark at breakfast on thursday

    2. fredwilson

      Yes. I was saying that exact thing to my friend mark at breakfast on thursday

  15. bombtune

    I really like the idea of a visual approach to search. To often we live in the text world when some searches are simply better resulted and relevant via pictures. If I search Melbourne, Australia I’d like to see it first and then read about it. Conversely, if I search Melbourne pizza I obviously just want to see some results and not necessarily pictures of sliced pizza or Melbourne pizza parlors.

    1. fredwilson

      Right

    2. fredwilson

      Right

  16. k

    I get the feeling I still have to search way too much within my search results. It’s like a puzzle and they force me to scoll horizontally. The screen keeps moving while the search results are coming in and once they are in I ain’t even on the top of the page. I’m not sure there’s any real innovation here. Maybe it’s a good way to start but right now it ain’t for me.The videos in the search results are apparently being found with MSN Search.

  17. John Sharp

    Nice. I typed in “Rome” and the resulting image spread made me feel like I was on holiday. Very solid visual presentation – each component looks good in the context. Has this been done as well before? I don’t think so. The overlays and price information are also nicely thought-out – and will drive revenue.Only one problem – my 1280 by 800 laptop format isn’t doing Spezify justice.

  18. Joe Lazarus

    Spezify is visually interesting, but not my favorite format for search. Similar to Tumblr search, it’s nice eye candy, but I don’t find myself using either of them regularly. It might be better as some sort of browse interface… for discovery instead of search, say for a category like current movies or today’s news… or if they focused on a particular niche. For example, Spezify might be interesting as a visual search for Twitter, pulling in images, videos, and other images from people’s Twitter links along with the text results. I don’t like it for web search.

    1. fredwilson

      That seems to be the consensus

    2. fredwilson

      That seems to be the consensus

  19. nickmueller

    Spezify is based in Stockholm, too bad your trip here was so short Fred!

    1. fredwilson

      Yeah. I just figured that out. Bummer

    2. fredwilson

      Yeah. I just figured that out. Bummer

  20. bernardlunn

    Its the most fun new search engine I have ever seen. Fun for vanity searches, partly because – from my point of view – it gets it mostly right but when its wrong its hilarious. The most fun is places – obscure places that I love, totally rocks!

    1. fredwilson

      I’ll have to try obscure places I love. Thanks for the tip

    2. fredwilson

      I’ll have to try obscure places I love. Thanks for the tip

  21. ArtIg

    I like what it seems to be trying to do. It’s a great example of a “vector” that is an indicator of a direction, or where search or the presentation of information might be headed. Certainly supports your thought that there’s plenty of room for innovation.The comments shared might be put into at least two types: looking for a specific thing (e.g. NBA reference) and getting a “feel” for something (e.g., location, person). Spezify isn’t as good for the first, at least not it its current execution. But for the second, and for those times we don’t know quite yet what it is we’re looking for, it might be promising. I got helpful results from searching on Fred Wilson.I take the angle that when we do a search of the second type, we’re in the process of learning.The sense underlying some of the comments offered here might be something like start by gathering pieces and assemble them into a whole view. How this type of search and presentation might work is in its ability to successfully do this assembly and even first-pass synthesis. It’s kind of Bing that way. With the whole assembled, then you can do drill downs and continue the forming of your thoughts. Google might be seen as having done this decision making for you with ranking. But maybe that has played out now and it’s something to build on. Whether it is Spezify or someone else running with it, I agree that there’s something pretty interesting about doing more with the interplay of results and presentation, particularly visual presentation beyond layout of text.If the underlying things work well, visual presentation and interaction might be a strong ingredient for wide adoption.Thank you for finding and sharing this.

  22. Jason

    ♥ the uniqueness but i use it only for entertainment value. if i had a mobile app or mobile flash i could see myself remembering to use it, and especially if they’re always working to evolve their algorithm.

  23. ShanaC

    Spezify is visually stunning, like a piece of artwork. The size of the links in the flash are the right size that you want to click on them. Having a visual presentation allows for new ways of thinking up connections between ones thoughts and the search term. In that sense, thier idea is brilliant. I wish there were more people out there who would want to explore the connection between visualization and thinking the way Spezify does.I just wish I understood the navigation. What do the cardinal directions mean? I feel like I should have an emotional reaction to them, that up and right should be “better” results, either due to cultural affiliations, or something inborn in me. I also wish I could bookmark my visual place; which is not an ability innate to Flash, although it would be very useful once I figure out the UI. How many people are finding this to be true with themselves?

  24. julieallen

    I disovered Spezify a few weeks back after reading about it on Venture Beat – http://bit.ly/TNSvhAt the moment, from what I’ve learned, it claims to just be a hobby project for two guys working at a Swedish digital agency… if that’s the case, it’s definitely impressive…It’s a great tool for sparking imagination and certainly takes a creative approach to what we know to be ‘search’. It feels slightly clunky at the moment though and the UI isn’t the best, but there’s something in it.Also, right now, it’s not great for detailed searches, or if you want to find something fast… but then that isn’t necessarily what they’ve set out to do.I just read your previous article about search and google having won the “web search version 1.0″ game… so true. Makes me think of this quote by Henry Ford… “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.Interesting times ahead…

    1. ShanaC

      Someone needs to get those guys out of digital agency work and doing other things involving UI. There are not enough people doing creative UI where it matters…..Even if it is clunky, and a bit confusing, it”s a jump just by choosing visual mapping. *sigh*

      1. fredwilson

        Maybe that’s the goal of spezify

        1. ShanaC

          That being said, coders and art people don’t seem to be working as closely as they should. I told my friend at Ars over a year and a half they need to start covering who wins the Golden Nica, what is being talked about over at RhizomeFor some thier coding is not competitive, but the thinking is way up there.If this doesn’t promote a reaction and make you think, what will? http://vimeo.com/4464887

          1. fredwilson

            This is why ITP is such a great program. It brings together different kinds of people who learn about building interactive experiences together

  25. apmaran

    Nice but not really helpful; I’m more of a Silobreaker.com kind of guy…

  26. vcinvestor

    The critical success factor in personal search is selecting from the retrieved records the subset that are actually for the person who is the target of the search. Spezify is visually elegant but it does not seem to tackle this problem.For example, try Philip Handler. The famous one was, among other accomplishments, the President of the NAS. Another is a professor of Biology. A third is an architect. There are probably others in the retrieved records from a search engine.Another problem is nicknames. Do we do another search for Phil Handler? If this is a serious search one should. And then one must sort through the two result sets, derive the new set of records for the correct Handler and finally combine them into a single “answer”. Wrapping searches in a very elegant display does not seem to improve the solutions to the underlying problems of person targeted searches.

    1. fredwilson

      That’s an issue when you search fredwilson too. And both google and spezify suffer from it

  27. TanyaMonteiro

    Wow, I’ve been wondering how visual results have not been so easy to come by and now this! Always finding very useful information in your updates! Thank you!

  28. Bruce Colwin

    Fun to play with but not particularly helpful in terms of relevancy of results.

  29. Bruce Colwin

    http://www.newscred.com/art…Search engines are meant to be quick, dirty and efficient. But what if you’re looking for something less tangible — like the right creative spark? Spezify is a search aggregator with designers in mind. Felix af Ekenstam and Per Persson, who work at Swedish digital marketing agency Tewonder, wanted an easy way to find visual inspiration through search. While most real-time search engines display results in an ordered list, Spezify shows them off in a draggable interface inspired by the iPhone. It’s an attractive example of how the experience of a search results page could be turned upside down. Spezify pulls up results from Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, MSN and Flickr. “As a designer, you’re often looking for the essence of a word. We were sitting on Flickr, Twitter and Google Images and thought it would be great to have one place that collects all this stuff,” said Ekenstam. Spezify rides on image search results from other engines and is a hobby project for now, Ekenstam said, although a few other visual search engines have pulled in funding in the last year, like Superfish, which raised $5.3 million in January and Like.com, which closed a $32 million round last fall. Like and Superfish have their own in-house search technology, where a user can either pick an image they like and find ones with similar details or they can describe a visual they’re looking for and then come up with matching results.

  30. LEColon

    Thank you for sharing this link. This is one of the best, if not best meta search engine (of sorts) that I found. It gives me images, links, and excerpts of various types of results all in one page. I strongly recommend using this tool to help find “hidden gems” about a particular person or brand online.

  31. JenC

    Thanks Fred – this is great. Have you seen Viewzi? Particularly like the different display options (PowerGrid &Google Timeline are my favorites) . MIght be worth checking out. Definitely not perfect, but getting better.

    1. fredwilson

      I have not. I’ll check it out

  32. Dan Conway

    This is how I want my email inbox to look.

    1. fredwilson

      That would be coolGiven that email has many access protocols, I think someone should build this for webmail and even mail servers

  33. Christian Brucculeri

    I often use screen shots of these results for my client proposals. I find it sort of ironic that the social search engine that is the least quantifiable can create the best “oooh” factor in a client meeting.

    1. fredwilson

      That’s great. I love it

  34. Kevin Chan

    I remember Spezify being mentioned during Fred’s blog on Bing.I still use Google, but it would always be at the back of my mind if I want to see something image related with a quick summary, I’ll automatically Spezify it. To me the 3 main reasons why I still use it, rather than ignore it like Bing is that it is something lite. If you’re looking for the 40 pages of search results, you’re obviously on the wrong URL.It is visually stimulating. I for one will admit that I am attracted by its bright colors. Finally it has a fun user interface. I still get a kick out of dragging the page around to see my searches, and whether I missed out anything.

    1. fredwilson

      I’m so pleased that you like it and use it