If you had to bet on one environment where social discovery might work, it would probably be college campuses. High concentrations of young people with lots of energy and optimism seem like an ideal hotbed.

That’s where Hyphos, a new Los Angeles-based start-up from some recent college grads, is focusing. Hyphos, which has been in testing at UCLA and University of Connecticut, helps online users find offline activity and event partners. They’re experimenting with calling their college service “At the Pool.”

Be warned, this is a tiny company  – with only a few thousand testers — currently working on raising a seed round. But the Hyphos team seems to be doing some innovative thinking about how to make this all work.

For instance, users get Groupon-esque daily emails, suggesting one person a day in their area based on common interests. “We feel people are much less social than they used to be. Our thought is that by giving a person a day you easily can choose to meet someone,” Hyphos co-founder Alex Capecelatro told me. Hyphos is also trying to help users figure out what to do with each other, by maintaining online event calendars for each campus.

Capecelatro argued that he’s tapping into a renewable resource. “Unlike dating, you don’t get married and you’re done — you’re always looking to do new things,” he said.

You’d think this service might be a perfect fit for suggesting nearby matches based on mobile location tracking, like Grindr/Blendr, Ntro and others in the space. But Capecelatro said he worries broadcasting users’ locations can get too creepy and drive people toward using the service for hookups.

So instead, Hyphos wants to work on building an understanding of where users have been, based on their past activities and maybe build passive location tracking into its apps. Then it will suggest that users should meet other people who tend to frequent the same areas.

Back in 2008, hi5 trailed in popularity only behind MySpace and Facebook. In June, News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, sold MySpace for just $35 million, a major comedown for a company that was purchased for $580 million.

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But what if you want to meet someone new, with whom you might share common interests or perhaps a location? Web services for that stuff are — oddly — sort of rare.

But they do exist. There’s a category of Web sites and mobile apps that describe themselves as “social discovery” services, aiming to connect us with new people without the assumption that we may want to be in a serious relationship with them.

These include quite a few “pivoted” social networks, such as Tagged and MyYearbook, which tried to compete with Facebook and Myspace and moved to a different niche, as well as sites with more of a flirting orientation, like Badoo. They also include mobile-first experiences like the new LAL People, BuzzMob and Yobongo, which aim to connect users with people nearby.

Some of these sites are already quite popular. Tagged counts 10 million monthly active users and five billion monthly page views, and was profitable with $33 million in revenue last year. MyYearbook, which is in the process of merging with the similarly sized Quepasa in a deal worth $100 million, has four million monthly active users.

However, at least to my eye, many of the existing sites seem a bit cutesy and cheap-looking — not necessarily as clean and well-lit as alternatives like Facebook and Google+. Also, if you sign up for them, expect to receive an excessive number of emailed alerts and promotions aiming to get you to return on a daily basis.

The sites do have different demographics from each other. Tagged says its average user’s age is in the 30s; Badoo says 33 percent of its 51 million users are over 35 and its biggest market is Brazil; MyYearbook is the No. 1 site in ComScore’s teens category, while Quepasa is specifically focused on Latinos.

What unites social discovery sites is they are free and they have an underlying open social network. That’s in contrast to many dating sites that are more transactional in nature and wall off interactions so they can charge for them.

But the various sites and apps are different in many respects; for instance, the way they treat real names and identities. LAL/LikeALittle has a bent toward anonymity — and the troubled Color app even more so. Many of the sites offer more stringent Facebook logins as a registration option.

Meanwhile, some new sites, like Grubwithus, are specifically oriented toward organizing offline meetups. Sonar attempts to fill in the gaps between people who have things in common and happen to be nearby one another.

Many of the services have an overtone or an undertone that encourages flirting and casual hookups; though some — like Tagged and MyYearbook — give their users social games so they have something to do besides make small talk.

Tagged CEO Greg Tseng (pictured) said in a recent interview that he thinks the holy grail of his business will be discovering and employing the sociological predictors of friendship. Tseng said he and his competitors’ current efforts to help people find friends based on interests and locations are rudimentary at best. “We’re at 2004-2005 of social networks in social discovery,” he said.

But the friending algorithm is a problem more difficult than Netflix’s famous recommendation engine. As Tseng put it: “The movie doesn’t have to like you back.”

Meanwhile, Yobongo CEO Caleb Elston says the solution is more about product design. “Collectively we have spent just shy of a decade working to help people connect with the people they already know using the Internet,” Elston wrote in a recent email. “It is now feasible to help people make new connections. This is not a pure technology problem, it is much more about creating a place where people feel safe and comfortable making these new connections.”

Badoo’s director of marketing, Lloyd Price, quibbled with the term “social discovery” in a recent phone interview.

“I think that’s probably a very U.S., North American phrase,” he said. Instead, Badoo calls itself a “meeting network.”

But before we get too business analyst-y here — excited that there’s an underserved quadrant of opportunity in our social Web diagram! — it’s worth saying that social discovery may not be something many users need or want.

The Web is already full of niche communities for every hobby, pastime and location, and they use tools like forums and message boards. And it’s also quite possible to find new and interesting people on a more generic site like Twitter or Tumblr.

But just in case there’s a broader social discovery opportunity to be found, lots of people would like to offer it.

Cartoon via HubSpot.

Screenshot of Google Image Swirl

This week, I tested forms of visual search from two companies that hold some serious clout when it comes to hunting around online–Google and Microsoft. Although Google has become our go-to site for looking anything up on the Internet, its searches are dense with text. Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which was introduced last spring, is marketed as a Google alternative that aims to return more useful query data on the first results page.

Both companies know there are times when text, alone, just won’t do. Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have long offered options for searching the Images section of almost any search term to find a visual representation of it. But now the companies are allowing visually minded users to scour through images to more efficiently pinpoint the picture or information they want. These new visual searches are a bit different. And they also differ from one another.

Users can use Google’s Image Swirl search to sift through some 200,000 queries of images. And Microsoft offers Bing Visual Search as a way of performing searches on images that are tagged with useful data. Google Image Swirl still requires you to input text search terms, but Bing Visual Search lets you select images the whole time, without typing search terms. The ability to search using images alone is also being explored, and a number of mobile apps make this possible, which I’ll briefly talk about in a bit.

Google’s Image Swirl, http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/, is currently categorized by the company as a Google Labs project, meaning that it’s in an experimental stage. It lets users search for images in certain categories that, according to computer vision algorithms, look like they would fit into the search results. Unlike Google queries using the “Images” section, Image Swirl sorts results into several stacks of images, with the most relevant results on the top of each stack. This makes for less image repetition in results, compared with regular image searches.

These stacks of images come in handy in cases where one word has two meanings, so users can select the one that represents what they’re searching for. Image Swirl also can be used to discover images of a place or thing that you didn’t originally associate with the search term.

By clicking on the top image in a stack, users can see a diagram of the main image positioned in a center circle and related images connected by lines that resemble bicycle spokes. Selecting one image pulls it to the center of the circle and repositions its surrounding photos. A search for “Robert Downey, Jr.” displayed several stacks—each topped with different images of him. There was a stack of pictures of him dressed as different movie characters, one of him at movie premieres, and a stack of his mug-shot arrest photos.

Hometown Search

Presumably because it’s an experiment, Image Swirl doesn’t cover a lot of topics. I typed “Allentown, PA,” the name of my hometown, into the Image Swirl search box and received a message that said my query wasn’t included in the demo.

Since computer vision algorithms can make mistakes, Image Swirl can pull up images that aren’t relevant to the intended search. My search for “George Washington Bridge” pulled up photos of the bridge at different times of the day from different angles, divided into stacks. But one photo was of a Marvel Comics character named G.W. Bridge. Another was of bikes on pavement, a photo from a Web site for “Bike Month NYC” that mentioned the bridge.

While Google’s Image Swirl works well as an image search engine, Bing Visual Search is a collection of 48 galleries of photos and is designed to be a data search engine by associating each image with specific data.

For example, a search for “Famous Directors” is sorted alphabetically. Each image displays data about the person it represents when you hover over it with a cursor. Steven Spielberg’s image text tells me he’s 63 years old, directed 26 films and won two Oscars, and that his highest grossing film was “Jurassic Park,” at $919.7 million. A list on the left side provides categories with which I can narrow the search results. In the case of the “Famous Directors” gallery, these categories include gender, country of origin, and what genre he or she is best known for directing.

Some of the Visual Search galleries include digital cameras, dog breeds, world leaders, top iPhone apps and yoga poses. Each has its own detailed description and left-side subcategories that can be selected for narrowing down the results. But these Bing Visual Search categories represent images only from sources that have teamed up with Bing, like Fox Sports, Billboard and the American Film Institute. Google searches a larger pool of data from Google Images, which crawls the entire Web.

The Bing Visual Search results have all been pre-sorted and tagged to associate with a search term. Bing Visual Search is especially helpful with product searches, since each image has a good deal of information associated with it, including price, product reviews and brand. Some items can even be purchased directly from these links.

After searching with either Google Image Swirl or Bing Visual Search, the final click on an item often takes users to a more text-based Web page, where people can dig deeper into the details of the searched item, like a plain, text search. But first seeing an image could help to narrow the field—or expand a search to include something else that wasn’t originally intended.

Augmented Reality

For people looking to take visual search quite literally (without typing any text at all), mobile devices with built-in cameras can let people point and search in a different way from either Image Swirl or Visual Search.Thanks to the integration of augmented reality (AR)—a way of matching real-world photos with computer-generated images—into mobile apps, users can aim their device at something and the image can then be used to identify the subject, as well as details about it.

Screenshot of Bing Visual Search

I tried three apps on Google’s Nexus One mobile device and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone: Google Goggles, SnapTell and Layar. SnapTell retrieved much search data about two books I captured in photos.

Google Goggles is a visual-search application that works on phones running Google’s Android operating system. With Goggles, people could take photos of the outside of a restaurant and learn its name, menu or read customer reviews. Likewise, snapping a photo of a piece of art will return details like its title and artist, as well as a Web link to more information. Google says Goggles will be coming to other mobile platforms in the future.

This technology brings up a potential privacy issue: Could you some day take a photo of someone and then search for information on that person?

A Google spokesperson says this app has the ability to use facial recognition with Goggles, but hasn’t launched this feature because it hasn’t been built into an app that would provide real value for users. The spokesperson also cites “some important transparency and consumer-choice issues we need to think through.”

A Walk With the Beatles

SnapTell (http://snaptell.com/apps) is another app that uses AR on Android devices as well as Apple’s iPhone. It allows you to snap a photo of a book, CD, videogame or DVD, and get information about it. Layar (http://layar.com) is an app that lets people point their Android devices at locations to get more information. You could see an on-screen visual of a completed structure by pointing the camera at a construction site, or look at a representation of the Beatles on Abbey Road by pointing your phone at the famous crosswalk.

If you’re a visual thinker and you work well by seeing illustrations of the things for which you search, Bing Virtual Search or Google Image Swirl might help. Or consider using an app with your mobile device that takes advantage of AR technology if you want fast information about something while you’re on the go. As all of these products improve, they’ll include more categories and images to aid online explorations.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/in-search-of-images-worth-1000-results/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here/ http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:55:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=21125 Tagged.com claims it is the third-largest social network in the U.S., in terms of total monthly visits. And now, perhaps, we know why: Tagged lured new members to its site by tricking users into providing it with access to their personal email contacts. The company then spammed those contacts with promotional emails disguised as invitations to view personal photos. And when they registered with Tagged to view those photos, the company spammed their contacts as well.

An interesting variation on the “membership drive” and one that’s gotten Tagged in hot water with New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who intends to sue the company “for deceptive e-mail marketing practices and invasion of privacy.”

“This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts for Tagged’s unethical–and illegal–behavior. This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books and sending phony mail to all of an individual’s personal contacts. We would never accept this behavior in the real world, and we cannot accept it online.”

Tagged, for its part, claims this is all just a big misunderstanding. In a statement of its own, the company denied abusing its users’ personal address books, saying, essentially, it had their consent to do so.

“When our company tested a new registration process, we discovered that our ‘invite your friends’ language was confusing,” said Tagged CEO Greg Tseng. “…In no instance did Tagged access a person’s personal address book without their consent and no emails were sent without the person giving us permission. We realize that some were confused and accidentally agreed to invite their friends.”

Oh, and next time you register for a social network, be sure to read its Terms of Service–especially the portions that are presented in ALL CAPS. They might be important. From Tagged’s Terms of Service:

“E) Notice Regarding Commercial Email

MEMBERS CONSENT TO RECEIVE COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES FROM TAGGED, AND ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES AND OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE USED BY TAGGED FOR THE PURPOSE OF INITIATING COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here-2/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:55:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=21125 Tagged.com claims it is the third-largest social network in the U.S., in terms of total monthly visits. And now, perhaps, we know why: Tagged lured new members to its site by tricking users into providing it with access to their personal email contacts. The company then spammed those contacts with promotional emails disguised as invitations to view personal photos. And when they registered with Tagged to view those photos, the company spammed their contacts as well.

An interesting variation on the “membership drive” and one that’s gotten Tagged in hot water with New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who intends to sue the company “for deceptive e-mail marketing practices and invasion of privacy.”

“This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts for Tagged’s unethical–and illegal–behavior. This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books and sending phony mail to all of an individual’s personal contacts. We would never accept this behavior in the real world, and we cannot accept it online.”

Tagged, for its part, claims this is all just a big misunderstanding. In a statement of its own, the company denied abusing its users’ personal address books, saying, essentially, it had their consent to do so.

“When our company tested a new registration process, we discovered that our ‘invite your friends’ language was confusing,” said Tagged CEO Greg Tseng. “…In no instance did Tagged access a person’s personal address book without their consent and no emails were sent without the person giving us permission. We realize that some were confused and accidentally agreed to invite their friends.”

Oh, and next time you register for a social network, be sure to read its Terms of Service–especially the portions that are presented in ALL CAPS. They might be important. From Tagged’s Terms of Service:

“E) Notice Regarding Commercial Email

MEMBERS CONSENT TO RECEIVE COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES FROM TAGGED, AND ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES AND OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE USED BY TAGGED FOR THE PURPOSE OF INITIATING COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090710/insert-bad-tagged-youre-it-pun-here-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080325/invite2messenger/ http://allthingsd.com/20080325/invite2messenger/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:09:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080325/invite2messenger/

In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): All participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community–determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): Establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

–J Allard, corporate vice president of design and development for the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet,” 1994

In February, Microsoft (MSFT) surprised industry watchers and embraced the idea of data portability, throwing its support behind OpenID, a decentralized digital-identity protocol.

This morning came the inevitable extension of that idea, the announcement of a partnership with five social networks on a new data-portability strategy. LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo (TWX) and Facebook have all agreed to use Mirosoft’s Windows Live Contacts API to, in the words of John Richards, director of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform, “create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services.“

In other words “Windows Live Messenger.” Certainly, it’s hard not to look at Microsoft’s announcement that way, given the simultaneous debut of invite2messenger.net, a new Microsoft Web site through which people can invite friends from participating social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

“In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience,” explains Richards. “We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data. We encourage you to visit www.invite2messenger.net to see these ideas in action, and to invite your Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged friends to join you on the world’s largest instant messaging network, Windows Live Messenger.”

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