ShopWiki
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ShopWiki is an Internet shopping search engine was founded in 2005 and launched in early 2006. It was founded by the former DoubleClick CEO Kevin P. Ryan, the former CTO and DoubleClick co-founder Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz.
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[edit] How ShopWiki Works
ShopWiki uses a combination of a web crawler, artificial intelligence techniques, and a data extraction algorithm to seek out product information from online retailers.[1] ShopWiki's technology extracts the structure of a page, recognizing which, if any, of the page's items are products available for purchase and then identifying the data associated with each product offered: price, image, name, description and features.
[edit] Searching by color
In June 2006, ShopWiki launched "Search by Color," a feature that employs content-based image retrieval (CBIR) to find products that match a user's specified color. Some e-commerce companies (notably Etsy) had earlier developed similar tools. However, ShopWiki claims to be the first among shopping search engines to use advanced image analysis. [2]
[edit] ShopWiki vs. 1st Generation Price Engines
Offers found through crawling constitute all of ShopWiki's index. "First-generation" price engines depend on product information manually submitted by merchants via data feeds. Smaller stores, or the "long tail", often lack the resources to prepare data feeds or pay fees most price engines levy for inclusion in their listings. Since ShopWiki relies primarily on crawling, it does not charge for inclusion.
However, ShopWiki has received criticism that results they produce are many times inaccurate and unreliable due to the engine's crawling process.
[edit] Wiki Guides
ShopWiki features wiki buying guides. The buying guides, similar to Wikipedia articles, can be written and/or edited by anyone visiting the site. Guides have been created based on occasion ("Anniversary Gifts"), recipients ("Gifts for Babies"), seasons ("Fall Football"), and other traditional categories ("Home & Garden")[3].
[edit] Video Reviews
ShopWiki's launch was followed two weeks later with the announcement of user-generated video reviews. In these video clips, product owners demonstrate and discuss the product. In order to encourage user submissions, ShopWiki offered monetary compensation ($50 USD) for clips until February 28th, 2007. The site has amassed over 1000 videos and continues to accept submissions, although they do not offer $50 per video anymore.
[edit] Valentine's Day Video Contest
In February of 2007, ShopWiki hosted a Valentine's Day themed video contest called "I Heart [Blank]", in which users were encouraged to submit short videos of why they could not live without a certain product of their choice. Users submitted videos on a variety of products such as cameras, pens, shoes, sodas, and toys. The winner of the contest received a $500 gift certificate based on the number of votes and ratings from viewers. On February 14, 2007, ShopWiki announced that the winning submission was a video that featured a user explaining why she loved her Winchester Folding Serrated knife [4]
[edit] References
- ^ Cherry, Lynn. "Has Shop Wiki Mastered the Crawl and Extract?." Search Vertically. March 2006.
- ^ ShopWiki Enhances Shopping Experience with First "Search by Color" Technology (Press Release).
- ^ ShopWiki Buying Guides Shopwiki Buying Guides
- ^ ShopWiki Valentine's Day Video Contest. "You Shared Your Love; Which Video Has Won $500?." February 2007.
