Want To Shop Like the Stars but Words Fail You?

Like, it's a bag, like Mischa Barton's.

If words fail when it comes to specifying the exact attributes of the handbag, watch, shoes, or jewelry of the celebrity you most want to imitate, you might have some joy with www.like.com.

Munjal Shah, CEO and co-founder of Like's parent company, Riya, hopes his new Web site will spark an online shopping revolution as fashionistas stampede for its new visual -- not verbal -- search engine.

Launching just in time for Christmas in the high-margin accessories market, the site differs from most celeb-led Web-shopping options by letting users search by appearance rather than by keyword or tag.

"We believed the way to innovate was to look inside the photograph," Shah told Reuters by telephone.

If, for instance, you like the pointy toe of Brad Pitt's boot, or Kate Moss's teardrop earrings, the site prompts you to emphasize shapes, colors or patterns you like to find similar versions elsewhere on the Web.

"The introduction of a new search engine does not ordinarily elicit the same oooh's and aaah's as the introduction of the new Prada collection, but this is unlike any search engine we've ever seen," enthused the blog at women's Web-shopping site www.shefinds.com.

"Now we don't even have to be able to read and write, to be able to shop," it says. "Text searches are so last season."

The promise of matching a look by pointing at it has generated huge publicity for the site, which launched November 8 despite not being technologically ripe. It is in its "Alpha" version, which usually marks a project being tested in-house.

Riya, which spawned Life, offers a photo-matching face-recognition service which has been difficult to turn into cash, but Shah said Like is already generating commission revenue.

29 SHADES OF BLUE

So far the site seems to be attracting geeks keen to try the technology as well as women. Shah also sees a market in men needing to buy accessories for wives and girlfriends.

But chic clickers will need patience before like.com brings them close to many of the objects of their desire.

So far, it only links to U.S.-based shopping sites and users can only match accessories to pictures in the site's own library. Only 16 celebrities feature in its gallery, although it is possible to search for others.

"The real test will be when you'll be able to upload images of your own and do searches," wrote Danny Sullivan in a blog at http://searchenginewatch.com.

Shoppers should be able to put their own pictures into the system's search engine from January, Shah said, adding that the site is also poised to add around 100,000 celebrity pictures.

Tediously for shoppers who want it now, the site's search engine uses a lot of maths and a lot of computing power as each element of a picture is converted into a "visual signature." The processing power involved has, Shah says, put many people off attempting visual search.

To illustrate, he cites color. Riya's technology experts thought like.com needed to encode 10 basic colors, but marketing disagreed and to prove it women in the team came up with 29 different shades of blue in two minutes.

So far, at least one fashion victim has been disappointed. Blogger Cristina, writing a new diary at www.thefashionfaction.com, tried to match a pair of strappy shoes -- but the site's offering included workboots.

"What?! Workboots? Workboots?! I mean, come on!" she wrote. "If the site doesn't return relevant results what use is it to people like me and my readers?"

Shah said she had used the site when its technology was very raw, and the latest of regular upgrades should have fixed that. He said he chose to move fast with the launch to speed up the learning process.

"You learn slower than if you just accept the criticism," he said. "And there really is nothing like it."

Source: news.yahoo.com