Simon’s Blog

Saul Klein from Index Ventures has a post about Imagini being on the Alexa movers and shakers list. Saul says Imagini’s social networking is “clearly addictive”. But is it really? I’m not so sure.

People might be finding it addictive. However, I think there’s an alternative explanation that fits the current data; and that is - some people find it interesting enough to try it a couple of times. Just like they do with lots of other profiling systems on the web.

One of the problems, IMHO, with VisualDNA (which is Imagini’s central idea) is that it doesn’t really seem to add much value, compared to the thousands of other profiling sites on the web - for example, you click on a photo of a car, and it profiles you as “loving the open road”. I don’t think there’s enough that’s unique here, in terms of profiling, to really own the “profiling” space.

Now, what Imagini are doing is taking the idea of generically profiling someone e.g. “You are fun-loving and romantic”… and then applying that profile to both social networking and e-commerce.

I think there’s a problem with that too - because I’m not convinced there’s much genuinely useful information contained in the “VisualDNA” profile. For example, during profiling, the system asks you to click on something you don’t like e.g. a photo of someone with a hairy back. And it asks you to click on something you do like e.g. a glass of champagne. Then, for social networking, it finds people that have clicked on the same combinations of photos. Will this really enable people to find new friends? How will they approach each other? “Hi! I don’t like hairy backs either! And I like drinking champagne. Wanna be my friend?”

It’s the same issue with e-commerce. Is there enough information in the profile to present people with goods they will really want to buy? I think Amazon does this kind of targetted offering of new goods so much better… and the the reason, I would suggest, is that there’s a huge amount of information embedded in actual purchasing decisions, compared to the information content of a generic VisualDNA profile.

Anyway, I’d be happy to be proved wrong here - stranger things than this have succeeded. I wish the Imagini guys well - it’s great to see people trying ideas out. However, I have to say, I really don’t get this one. Time will tell on this - I think it’s too early to say whether Imagini is on an upward trend, or if it has just had a spike in popularity.