Israeli startup Mobli unveils event-based photo and video search
16 Jun 2015
Israel-based photo- and video sharing social network startup Mobli has unveiled its flagship product, `EyeIn', a real-time image search engine that allows users to track content like selfies as soon as they are posted on social networks.
EyeIn, which is now available on the web and as a mobile app, uses its algorithms to filter out content like selfies to return the most relevant results to users.
The service allows users to search for pictures and video clips taken by people at concerts, sports events, demonstrations or natural disasters as they post images on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, a unit of Facebook.
What marks out EyeIn is the real-time, location-based search against the established category that typically searches on the basis of popularity or other ranking methods, or through classified searches through separate social media feeds.
Top photo sites, including Yahoo's photo-sharing arm Flickr, Google Image Search and Facebook, as well as Facebook's Instagram photo-sharing site, use search methods based on popularity or other rankings.
The Tel Aviv-based startup, founded by chief executive officer Moshe Hogeg, has raised about $86 million in funding to create EyeIn, which has been in development for over three years.
Mobli, which is backed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and US celebrity investors Leonardo DiCaprio, Serena Williams, Lance Armstrong and Tobey Maguire, has raised more than $90 million in funding.
"Computers are very stupid, we need to give them very specific algorithms to detect what is the center of the event," Hogeg was quoted as saying in an interview.
"We want to be the Google of crowd-generated visual content," he said, adding that he expects the EyeIn technology to boost audience traffic and time spent on news websites.
Mobli doesn't see Google Image Search or Instagram as direct competitors to EyeIn because each serves a different function, he adds.
EyeIn, he said, differentiates by selecting the most relevant content from live events or trending topics and sorting images so users don't have to wade through thousands of hashtag results or rely on news outlets to select photos and videos.
''We have eyes all over the world. Everything worth seeing is being capture by someone with a smartphone. What we lack is a mechanism to collect those eyes, to enable us to look around,'' says Sadeh.
One of EyeIn's most interesting features is the ability to filter image results by date. Sadeh demonstrated a search of Paris' Place de la Republique, going back to the 11 January rally in support of Charlie Hebdo.
Being able to narrow down search results by date will be a very useful tool for journalists, historians, archivist, and anyone else in need of a visual time machine, he added.
