I’ve updated this story, given that I was attacked for not digging enough. See update here.
Just six months ago, things weren’t looking great for Like, a Silicon Valley company that offers visual search for shopping.
Its traffic wasn’t going anywhere.
But suddenly, over four months, the company has tapped a robust number of users, and it now expects to earn more than $10 million in revenue this year. It’s all driven by a steady refining of the site’s features. Now customers click through on items at a rate as high as 90 percent, compared to a year ago, when they clicked through 16 percent of the time, says chief executive Munjal Shah. Tonight, the company put the finishing touches on a new release.
Shah says visual shopping search is more viable than social shopping search, which offers a way to share what you are buying with friends. The reason, Shah says, is that shopping is a more solitary activity than people may realize. “We’re killing them,” he says, of social search engines — this includes ThisNext, for example. [Update: Fred Wilson calls me on this, saying the traffic trend isn't clear. The Comscore chart below shows that the two sites are both growing last year. But look at the hockey stick growth of Like in December. Shah's argument rests on Like.com's traffic since that time, i.e. through December, January and Feb. ThisNext's traffic didn't go anywhere in December, which is supposed to be a huge month for shopping. But it's true, we haven't seen ThisNext's traffic since then, so it's too early to fully test Shah's claims. Update II: I forgot to point out that, while Fred focuses on traffic, the more significant point Shah is trying to make goes beyond traffic: Like is getting superior click-throughs and revenue generation. He showed me internal stats for both traffic and revenue. I'm checking with ThisNext to see what they will share.]
Earlier, VentureBeat reported Like.com had raised $3.3m more in financing, and that it is now getting 3 million monthly unique visitors.
Like lets you search for shoes, bag and jewelry by typing in terms related to their visual characteristics. Here’s how Like works: It converts your search term, say “red snappy shoes” into a visual search for only shoes that are red and snappy (try typing that into other search engines, such as Shopping.com, and you’ll get many other types of shoes in search results, many of them not red, and not snappy).
Like is being helped by other companies, such as Zappos, which take the risk out of buying things online. Zappos, for example, offers free delivery of purchases for shoes, and lets you return shoes if they don’t fit. This gives people more incentive to buy online, and they’re using Like.com to search for styles and colors before buying, Shah says. Once a person selects a shoe, Like.com lets them buy it from Zappos if it’s in stock.
Like will soon offer a way to search for certain materials/textures as well. It’s refining a way to return the trendiest items on the top of its results, in consultation with fashion experts about what color palettes and silhouettes are “in” at any given time.
It will fine-tune other features in coming months, some of which are being introduced now but aren’t perfect. For example, it will let you find accessories and other items that match products you’re searching for. But it will do things like recommend polka dotted shoes when buying a polka dotted dress — not necessarily the greatest match. But Shah says the point is to deliver and then incorporate feedback. The site is looking much better than the last time we looked at it, here.
See update to this story here.
20 Comments
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Chris R said:
The site seems to cluttered and complicated. I don’t know what is going on when I click.
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Ted said:
On what basis do they plan to bring in $10m? Couldn’t you have asked?
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Sunil B said:
I re-tried this out and the both the items I wanted to look at were dead links on the actual sites. So they still have work to do. I quite like endless.com from amazon for a ui.
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Fishy said:
I don’t know if I should believe those numbers. I smell something is fishy going on here. 90% clickthru rates?.. hmmmm…
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Devin Anderson said:
Does Amazon have anything like these features? If the site continues to grow I wonder if Amazon will start to do some of the same things or just buy one of these companies?
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Munjal Shah said:
All,
This article got posted a little ahead of our launch of the new site. What you are seeing right now is the old site. The new site should be up soon (next day or so).
Thanks
Munjal Shah
CEO - Like.com -
Munjal Shah said:
Matt,
With your update you are missing the point and going down the same path as Fred and Mathew. This is not about traffic - who cares if you are bigger in traffic. Web 2.0 companies need to be focused on revenue and ultimately profits. My comments are about that are here
http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2008/02/bloggers—show.html
Also you wrote iLike.com in your update - should be Like.com
Munjal Shah CEO - Like.com
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Matt Marshall said:
Munjal is right. He showed me both his traffic and his internal revenue numbers, and the traffic discussion, which Fred focuses on, is less important overall than the revenue side. But even there, it is true I don’t know what ThisNext’s situation is, but I have called them, and am awaiting their response. Finally, Ted, regarding the $10 million, it comes from click-throughs it sends to merchants, at which point Like gets paid if a purchase actually goes through. Apologies for not making that clear.
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Web ref said:
Munjal is a well-known huckster. I would take anything he tells you with a grain of salt. Most likely, this is part of his “please buy us” metrics-bending hype, since Google passed on Riya. Same shit, different package.
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Arthur Howe said:
So the clickthrough rates you quote are based on Munjal’s “internal revenue numbers and traffic discussion”? I suggest you retract this story and pretend it never happened. At the very least, you should amend the top of the story to note that these numbers are based on Munjal’s conjecture.
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Matt Marshall said:
Arthur, not sure what you’re saying. The clickthroughs are based on what Munjal told me. I attributed it all to him. I’m not going to retract the story.
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Tad Askew said:
This weekend on VentureBeatVentureMeat! Another storm in a teaspoon!
Marshall jumps the gun on Shah’s hyperbole about one marginally relevant site in comparison with another.
Uberjournobloggers Ingram and Wilson respond with sanctimonious hand-wringing.
Is it traffic? Is it revenue? Eyeballs? Nutmeat?
Powerpoint at Eleven!
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sk said:
Well Guys i have a different story to say. Munjal is a great story teller and this is how he earns sucks money from VC. Look at the history -
–> Raised $68 mil when he the CEO at andale. The company got sold at around $12M to Vendio.com. Think about the valuation here?
–> Raised $20 M + $3.3 M for like.com. Do any one think $ 23.3 M is needed to visual search company? This site is essentially an image makeover from which Munjal is trying to show it to ppl. He has enough bad name in India(Bangalore) for the dev center which he had here.I want to sum up by saying Munjal is just making hype up the market. He is a big looser and he knows how to make his personal money from VC’s.
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Munjal Shah said:
Michael, Om, Matt - it is time for the Alexa for Revenue. It is time Web 2.0 grows up to be real businesses. I don’t see why you guys can’t ask a startup to show you their revenue numbers like I showed Matt and Michael (when he wrote about our Likesense product) before you guys write a positive article. Frankly just by asking for this you all will help drive a healthy shift toward profitability for all startups in this area. My full thoughts here
http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2008/02/the-revenue-ale.html
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patricia said:
Analytics are a watery thing. No one specific analytics solution on the market is really 100% accurate, traffic can and is bought and engineered, and there’s a broad misconception of what constitutes good/valuable traffic. Not all sites are going to have Myspace level traffic but the market isn’t really at a place where people realize it. And, you rarely hear people talk about session times and repeat visitors - there’s a long way to go before the masses of the market understand all of it. I can say for fact the right people know about Like.com and for it being owned by a guy, it’s surprisingly designed well for appealing to women. A lot of male-owned/women-targeted sites fail with that.
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Munjal Shah said:
The new version of Like.com is live now…
Try it out here http://www.like.com
You can also read about the backstory here
http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2008/02/likecom-live-wi.html
Patricia yo words about designed wll for appealing to women is like music to my ears… see my backstory for details on why… ;-)
Munjal Shah - CEO Like.com
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Ramon said:
I found the site to be confusing as well, not as good as it sounds. Great webdesign dough.
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PixLover said:
Clearly like.com is a late entry to this space. A European company called PIXSTA way before implemented and invented visual search for products. (the days Riya was still searching for faces). Check it out http://www.pixsta.com - very cool technology, very cool concept, not cluttered at all, a very fast index search on images, just images search for images of similar kind… - much more google like.
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hari said:
“But suddenly, over four months, the company has tapped a robust number of users, and it now expects to earn more than $10 million in revenue this year. ” — Ur traffic “suddenly” goes up with very little change in the website design..it sounds suspicious, maybe Riya hired click monkeys in some part of the world (india?) to click their shopping website so that they are a good acquisition target?
BTW where is the feature where you upload your pics and get a similar looking product? that would help getting traffic i guess.
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13 Trackbacks
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Bloggers need to try even harder - - mathewingram.com/work said:
[...] example Fred uses is a VentureBeat post about visual-search site Like.com (formerly known as Riya), which Matt Marshall says has seen its [...]
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Bloggers need to try even harder - - mathewingram.com/media said:
[...] example Fred uses is a VentureBeat post about visual-search site Like.com (formerly known as Riya), which Matt Marshall says has seen its [...]
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Final Tag | said:
[...] Venturebeat article about the growth of visual shopping search service Like.com [...]
5:59 pm
The Web RoundUp: Feb 17, 2008 : unitedBIT said:
[...] Just six months ago, things weren’t looking great for Like, a Silicon Valley company that offers visual search for shopping. Its traffic wasn’t going anywhere. But suddenly, over four months, the company has tapped a robust number of users, and it now expects to earn more than $10 million in revenue this year. It’s all driven by a steady refining of the site’s features. Now customers click through on items at a rate as high as 90 percent, compared to a year ago, when they clicked through 16 percent of the time, says chief executive Munjal Shah. Shah says visual shopping search is more viable than social shopping search. The reason, Shah says, is that shopping is a more solitary activity than people may realize. Like lets you search for shoes, bag and jewelry by typing in terms related to their visual characteristics. Here’s how Like works: It converts your search term, say “red snappy shoes” into a visual search for only shoes that are red and snappy (try typing that into other search engines, such as Shopping.com, and you’ll get many other types of shoes in search results, many of them not red, and not snappy). More at VentureBeat [...]
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Pro Tech Bloggers Losing Their Cred? « Crazynetechstuff’s Weblog said:
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Linking To Differing Opinion | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing said:
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..:: ExaSpring’s Blog ::.. Web Hosting, Web Designing and SEO Blog ::.. » Blog Archive » SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 18, 2008 said:
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