Sunday, June 5, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Shut Down Notice from GazoPa
Dear GazoPa User,
Thank you for using GazoPa services. GazoPa.com started at TechCrunch50 in September 2008 and has grown to more than 90,000 unique users per month. However, we have decided to put our time and efforts to BtoB business and will discontinue our BtoC services on June8, 2011. We have received lots of inquiries from all over the world and decided to focus on BtoB market especially in China where e-commerce grows dramatically.
When we started our service in 2008, some people were skeptical about our activity. But Since then, the number of images and videos on the internet are increasing and the demand to a navigation tool is growing as well. Considering inquiries that reach to us, we believe similar image search engine would be becoming must-have tool in various kinds of fields.
Due to our limited resources, we have had to make the hard decision to shut down our BtoC sites and decided to focus on BtoB market.
We'll be launching a new image search site mainly for research purpose in near future as an alternative tool for our current users.
If you have any questions, please email contact@gazopa.com.
One again, thank you all for your support over the years.
Sincerely,
The GazoPa team
Thank you for using GazoPa services. GazoPa.com started at TechCrunch50 in September 2008 and has grown to more than 90,000 unique users per month. However, we have decided to put our time and efforts to BtoB business and will discontinue our BtoC services on June8, 2011. We have received lots of inquiries from all over the world and decided to focus on BtoB market especially in China where e-commerce grows dramatically.
When we started our service in 2008, some people were skeptical about our activity. But Since then, the number of images and videos on the internet are increasing and the demand to a navigation tool is growing as well. Considering inquiries that reach to us, we believe similar image search engine would be becoming must-have tool in various kinds of fields.
Due to our limited resources, we have had to make the hard decision to shut down our BtoC sites and decided to focus on BtoB market.
We'll be launching a new image search site mainly for research purpose in near future as an alternative tool for our current users.
If you have any questions, please email contact@gazopa.com.
One again, thank you all for your support over the years.
Sincerely,
The GazoPa team
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Stock photo is searchable
Stock photo is searchable at GazoPa.com now. Searching for Flickr photos with Creative Commons have been popular for users who search for images that can be used at their presentations. Now stock photo can be a choice for your slick presentations.
Just click 'stock photo' tab on search result pages. It enables you to search for similar images among stock photos.
Stock photo from Shutterstock is available now and other stock photo will be added to our database soon.
Just click 'stock photo' tab on search result pages. It enables you to search for similar images among stock photos.
Stock photo from Shutterstock is available now and other stock photo will be added to our database soon.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
One year has passed since launch of open beta
One year has passed since launch of GazoPa.com in open beta. Thank you for your support and feedback. The number of unique user has grown to more than 80,000 per month and it doubled during six months. I should admit that this number is not big as a web service, but it's not too bad as a web service that does not run ads.
The number of images that we have indexed has reached 90 million and it will exceed 100 million soon. It took longer than we expected, because it was not an easy job to handle these huge data. I'm very proud of our engineers who have overcome these difficulties.
We released three services within one year such as GazoPa Style Search, GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom. GazoPa Style Search is a service that our technology has been applied to e-commerce. We changed UI that sorts search results by price range recently and it helps users to find Steal vs. Splurge easily. GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom is a service that has social element and the more users use these, the more interesting these services become.
We released new services one after another during one year. It's a good timing to review our works and to improve these so that we can satisfy current users. We're especially focusing on tuning up search results of GazoPa Style Search. Please keep watching our progress in next one year.
The number of images that we have indexed has reached 90 million and it will exceed 100 million soon. It took longer than we expected, because it was not an easy job to handle these huge data. I'm very proud of our engineers who have overcome these difficulties.
We released three services within one year such as GazoPa Style Search, GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom. GazoPa Style Search is a service that our technology has been applied to e-commerce. We changed UI that sorts search results by price range recently and it helps users to find Steal vs. Splurge easily. GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom is a service that has social element and the more users use these, the more interesting these services become.
We released new services one after another during one year. It's a good timing to review our works and to improve these so that we can satisfy current users. We're especially focusing on tuning up search results of GazoPa Style Search. Please keep watching our progress in next one year.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Two years has passed since our launch in private beta
Two years has passed since launch of GazoPa.com in private beta. It was during my trip in summer vacation that I heard news we were selected as a finalist for TechCrunch50. When I applied to the contest, no one including us believed that we would be selected finally. But fortunately, we got a ticket to pitch our service in front of many audiences. I sometimes imagine what situation we were in if we were not selected. Our situation would have been totally different.
We have released one iPhone app, two facebook app and three web services during this two years. When we released GazoPa.com in private beta two years ago, some people said 'Image search? Is it promising?' But during this two years, situation has been changed a lot. Google implemented similar search feature at Google images and they display advertisements on result pages as they do in web search. They finally acquired like.com last month. EBay started offering beta service of similar image search on fashion category this year.
Situation around image search is moving fast. Image search has been studied many years and it's not a new area as research. Lots of companies have been trying to find a fortune in this field and they failed. Monetizing has been a critical issue for these companies. But e-commerce has been grown rapidly and navigation tool among tons of products has been awaited to be implemented. Image search meets e-commerce and this growing field would be a good application for it.
Our GazoPa Style Search is one of examples of this friendship. Current phase is in very early one and this is closer to our proof of concept rather than final service. We'll add new features continuously so that we can show image search would be a must-have features in e-commerce.
Trend toward image search just started and we'd like to provide necessary services over this tide and celebrate our next two years.
We have released one iPhone app, two facebook app and three web services during this two years. When we released GazoPa.com in private beta two years ago, some people said 'Image search? Is it promising?' But during this two years, situation has been changed a lot. Google implemented similar search feature at Google images and they display advertisements on result pages as they do in web search. They finally acquired like.com last month. EBay started offering beta service of similar image search on fashion category this year.
Situation around image search is moving fast. Image search has been studied many years and it's not a new area as research. Lots of companies have been trying to find a fortune in this field and they failed. Monetizing has been a critical issue for these companies. But e-commerce has been grown rapidly and navigation tool among tons of products has been awaited to be implemented. Image search meets e-commerce and this growing field would be a good application for it.
Our GazoPa Style Search is one of examples of this friendship. Current phase is in very early one and this is closer to our proof of concept rather than final service. We'll add new features continuously so that we can show image search would be a must-have features in e-commerce.
Trend toward image search just started and we'd like to provide necessary services over this tide and celebrate our next two years.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Launch of GazoPa Style and GazoPa Answers
Two weeks have passed since our launch of GazoPa Style and GazoPa Answers. GazoPa Style is a visual product search site that enables you to browse and search for similar fashion items easily. We have received not a few inquiries from e-commerce companies since our launch of GazoPa.com. But we have not applied our technology to product images specially, so GazoPaStyle is our first step.
GazoPa Style allows you to upload images from your own personal computers and to use images on other sites found by uploading image URL or by their plug-in tool for searching similar products. Currently women’s clothing shown on eBay, Amazon and Etsy are searchable at GazoPa Style.
One of challenging points is to display photos from eBay and Amazon at the same time, because quality of these photos differ from each other. Some photos on eBay are taken by individuals and all photos on Amazon are taken by professional photographers. Displaying photo taken by individual next to professional photo may not always generate a good user experience. It may confuse users whether they can buy new products or used items on Style. We're studying how we can provide a nice user experience.
GazoPa Answers is a visual Q&A site that enables you to ask questions visually. Users of GazoPa.com sent photos to us directly and asked us 'Who is this model?''Where is this?' 'What brand is this?'. Since GazoPa.com is a search service, it requires users to look for answers by themselves, but users may not always reach to appropriate answers. So, we think it may help users if there is a site where users can ask visual questions. This is the story behind GazoPa Answers.
There are lots of Q&A services on the internet, but almost all accept questions by text rather than by image. Type of questions by image is different from that by text and we think GazoPa Answers can have a unique position in Q&A area.
Since we just started GazoPa Answers, there is not many Q&A on it. But the more data we have, the more fun and more useful it becomes.
These service are in Beta stage, so your feedback would be highly appreciated.
GazoPa Style allows you to upload images from your own personal computers and to use images on other sites found by uploading image URL or by their plug-in tool for searching similar products. Currently women’s clothing shown on eBay, Amazon and Etsy are searchable at GazoPa Style.
One of challenging points is to display photos from eBay and Amazon at the same time, because quality of these photos differ from each other. Some photos on eBay are taken by individuals and all photos on Amazon are taken by professional photographers. Displaying photo taken by individual next to professional photo may not always generate a good user experience. It may confuse users whether they can buy new products or used items on Style. We're studying how we can provide a nice user experience.
GazoPa Answers is a visual Q&A site that enables you to ask questions visually. Users of GazoPa.com sent photos to us directly and asked us 'Who is this model?''Where is this?' 'What brand is this?'. Since GazoPa.com is a search service, it requires users to look for answers by themselves, but users may not always reach to appropriate answers. So, we think it may help users if there is a site where users can ask visual questions. This is the story behind GazoPa Answers.
There are lots of Q&A services on the internet, but almost all accept questions by text rather than by image. Type of questions by image is different from that by text and we think GazoPa Answers can have a unique position in Q&A area.
Since we just started GazoPa Answers, there is not many Q&A on it. But the more data we have, the more fun and more useful it becomes.
These service are in Beta stage, so your feedback would be highly appreciated.
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