English (United States)Photobucket’s New Search Tool Focuses on Fun
Powered by Microsoft Silverlight, Photobucket Visual Search makes it easier to browse billions of photos on popular image-hosting site.
Click here to try out the new Photobucket Visual Search.
Photobucket has gained enormous popularity as an image-hosting and slideshow-creation site since it was launched in 2003. Today it hosts close to 8 billion photos, with dozens more pouring in by the second.
Browsing through those photos, however, was a challenge. But now Photobucket’s new Visual Search feature gets site users to the photos they’re looking for – fast.
The new Photobucket Visual Search taps nearly 8 billion photos on the Photobucket site to return relevant search results without the clutter.
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Developed in collaboration with the Denver-based user experience agency EffectiveUI, Photobucket Visual Search is a new Silverlight and Windows Live Services application that makes browsing through all those pictures a breezy experience.
There are no wide-open white spaces, words, file names or other clutter to wade through. Photos can be shared instantly through Windows Live Messenger with a single click. Another click allows you to enter the photographer’s library or search for more pictures like the one you’re looking at.
Realizing the limits of throwing up a static grid of images on an HTML page, Photobucket began working with Microsoft and EffectiveUI more than a year ago on a variety of projects to explore how Microsoft technology might help them create something entirely new and compelling for their customers.
Perhaps best known for their work in developing the eBay desktop, EffectiveUI’s team are experts in developing “rich Internet applications” (RIAs or “ree-uhs”) that treat Web pages more like dynamic desktop applications than static HTML displays.
By integrating Photobucket’s already-rich interface with Windows Live Messenger and wrapping it into a fluid Silverlight application, the trio was able to create a unique new service for Photobucket’s 70 million registered users worldwide.
The search tool relies on metadata attached to each image by the person who uploaded it originally. Photobucket’s large media library allows for precisely relevant results, while the use of human input in the form of meta tags allows the search tool to essentially “think laterally,” and display a wide range of results relevant to the search term. The application also takes that metadata and pushes it through Windows Live Search to come up with related terms for the images.
Once users find a photo they like, they can broaden the search by looking at more images that match the characteristics of a given image, or explore the library of the person who uploaded a given image. That can be especially helpful if one finds, say, a picture of a festival they attended and want to see more.
After results are displayed, the application provides a lot of easy navigation options through both thumbnail and full-image views, and it all works fluidly, without page refreshes or other delays common with Web searches.
Not only does this provide a fun feature for users, but there are business benefits as well. By integrating Photobucket Visual Search through the Windows Live Messenger toolkit, Photobucket also gets a convenient way to reach the more than 320 million active Windows Live users around the world, and the 32 billion social relationships among them.
Click here to try out the new Photobucket Visual Search.
