Video, Photo Search Engine Taps RSS Feeds

Rather than focus on written words, Pixsy Corp. plans to make Web searching visual, and next week will launch a search engine that is designed to return thousands of photographs and video images from hundreds of sites.

The search technology aggregates, extracts and organizes visual content from real simple syndication (RSS) feeds. The software identifies the image, grabs the photograph and associated metadata, and turns the content into a thumbnail. Then brings back the image to Pixsy.com where the photo is indexed and made searchable.

Nearly one year after the site's preview launch, new technology now relies on spiders to crawl the Web seeking RSS feeds. The software aggregates thumbnail images, said Chase Norlin, co-founder and chief executive officer, told TechWeb.

Content comes from blogs; news sites like Reuters and The New York Times; photo and video sharing sites, YouTube and Grouper Networks; or social networks, mySpace.com.

Norlin, who managed the development of Sony's first online imaging service, said Pixsy's business model is to drive traffic to partners, rather than host the content.Pixsy forms partnerships, revenue-sharing deals with pay-per-click advertising, with content providers to give searchers access to more than 100 millions images, such as Apple iPods, Harley Davidson motorcycles, Microsoft Xbox game consoles and Sony Playstations.

The Pixsy visual search engine is segmented into categories, such as News, Celebrities & Entertainment, Blogs & Social Networks, People and Dating, Posters & Products, and Games. Once a search is done, the site separates the still images from the videos.

Pixsy.com is built on an Asynchronous JavaScript (Ajax) platform, so searchable keywords and context appear by moving the cursor over the image.

Searches are easy. And for publishers and graphic artists, the image search engine provides an alternative source other than proprietary image collections, such as Getty Images, to seek available content on the Web.