Leap.it wants to make search social and visual
1 hour ago Apr. 21, 2014 - 9:34 AM PDT
Even as Google controls 67.5 percent of the search market, there are still startups that are trying to change the way the world finds content online from upstarts like Blippex or giants such as Apple with its Siri product. There is also Leap.it, a company in Kansas City, Kan. that started with a mobile product three years ago and has recently changed directions, focusing on a new search product for the web.
Yes, its a mobile world, but Leap.it CEO Mike Farmer is convinced that he can build a new web-based search experience more cheaply and then perhaps apply what it has learned to the mobile world. The product, called Leap.it, is a visual search page that showcases trending news on the home page and then responds to a search inquiry with visual cards that show what kind of content the searcher will find if she clicks.
In my searches I found that the experience was engaging, but also that the massive amount of search engine optimization and crap pages that offer computer-generated lists made for a cluttered page that was hard to scan for the information I wanted. For example, my search for vegetarian crock pot recipes and how to teach my dog to dance both led me to some decent initial results, but going any deeper was annoying as all get out because figuring out what was useful required me to click through to the results.
I imagine years of practice will help Leap.it differentiate between good and bad results. But the Leap.it experience shines in two respects: the social element and serendipity. The serendipity is easy; any visit to the Leap.it home page shows you trending stories, which is pretty much a cross between TMZ and Gawker. Its akin to what Bing offers on its home page, only with a bit more information.
The other fun (and useful) element on Leap is the ability to save your high-quality search result cards as something called a perspective. These perspectives appear as a search result, which means my curated results now can help others searching for how to teach a dog to dance or vegetarian crock pot recipes. The idea is that humans will help cut through the SEO clutter and built out results worth coming to Leap.it for.
Below is a search result for vegetarian slow cooker recipes on Leap.it, which incorporates my perspective. Note, that the perspective was actually built using mostly imported links I found using Google as opposed to Leap.
And below is a Google result for the same search:
Originally posted here:
Leap.it wants to make search social and visual