Viewzi`s Various Views of Search - Whither Viewzi?
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The views I covered in this article and the previous one just scratch the surface as far as the kinds of visual search that Viewzi offers. And it's going to get crazier. According to a recent blog post on the site, “Each week, at least one new view will launch – sometimes a few at once.” A movie viewer and a blog search viewer are in the works. And of course, they're hiring. Currently they're looking for a web design superhero, a PHP rock star, a DHTML/JavaScript/CSS fanatic, and a Flash AS3 ninja (their descriptions, not mine).
Jason Kincaid writing for TechCrunch told of some really exciting steps that Viewzi plans to take in the future. Though right now searchers can only use views that have been created by Viewzi's developers, the company plans to “roll out an API in the near future which will allow users to create their own views, and eventually hopes to make a WYSIWYG 'View Maker' that will allow anyone to create their own views.” That has some real potential, if the views created by the “View Maker” are as fun to interact with as the ones that have been professionally created.
Speculating further on this point, imagine what would happen if Google and Viewzi struck a deal. For the ultimate do-it-yourself experience, combine a Google Custom Search Engine with a custom-made Viewzi view. Granted, quite a few of the results would be ugly, just as there are many ugly web sites online. But it would also offer an opportunity for sheer brilliance to shine through.
Rafe Needleman, writing for Webware, noted what is perhaps Viewzi's greatest strength: it's not really a search engine. As he explains, “the company is, in essence, trying to act as the broker between users and search engines, by doing two things: Sending search queries to multiple engines at once, and by taking search results and displaying them in better (or at least different) ways than the search companies are doing now.” It's an extremely clever idea; it means that Viewzi doesn't need to index the whole web, and that Google isn't really Viewzi's competition.
That doesn't mean that the two companies won't compete on some level. I'd be very surprised if Google doesn't have something like at least a few of Viewzi's views in the works. In any case, I'd definitely keep an eye on new developments at Viewzi. Yes, there are some issues, as you would expect for a beta, but the company's views make searching on the Internet fun again, and that's saying something.
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