This is a really cool idea and I'm glad someone's doing it. Have you considered talking to Amazon about it? It's definitely in their best interest for products to be easily identifiable, and they're already doing work on it in a different way with Price Check[1].
Unfortunately there are other companies with a strong incentive to make identifying specific products as difficult as possible[2]. And clothing companies have never been good about sticking with a specific product anyway. I got a Ralph Lauren suit last year that I liked enough to consider ordering another one, but they had already stopped making that style. Maybe dresses or something I could understand, but men's suits?
If you can't buy a product even if you can identify it, then what's the point? Do you have any thoughts on how to get around this problem? One idea that comes to mind is that you could use your data to build a ranking of how long clothing companies (or any companies) stick with their products. I'd certainly find it useful.
yeah - we currently actually work with a heap of retailers and we do match to where you buy them - we've around 90 or so at the moment (love to get your thoughts on http://about.crowdsend.com).
publishers can do a bunch of stuff too - but we think the bigger problem rests with the community than with publishers.
basically once a product's been identified then we match it to a bunch of retailers if we can find it!
That seems like a great way to go. I always felt somewhat embarrassed when googling bar codes trying to find a shirt or whatever. As a programmer I knew there's a better way for this to be done, which made the whole experience even less pleasant than it was already (and frankly it was already pretty boring). Glad to see you're stepping up to the plate.
Love the idea, sent through a beta invite request. Not sure about the fade in on the images on about.crowdsend I find it a bit annoying combined with scrolling - its like having two transitions on a powerpoint slide.
thanks mate. yeah i tried playing with that a bit - the idea was to stop people reading ahead so they focus on the content they are viewing and don't skip stuff
i can totally appreciate its annoying. kinda tough how to balance it
Yeah I can't think of any tricks that would work better for that. Although I think letting people skip through the way they normally read sites would be a good thing.
Yeah I tried to put those slide buttons on the right side to help with that prob but ill try to think how to fix what you mention. Thanks heaps for the feedback
even if you can't buy it, the tagged image data is going to be pretty valuable... couple it with an image matching engine, and they can charge for API access.
Unfortunately there are other companies with a strong incentive to make identifying specific products as difficult as possible[2]. And clothing companies have never been good about sticking with a specific product anyway. I got a Ralph Lauren suit last year that I liked enough to consider ordering another one, but they had already stopped making that style. Maybe dresses or something I could understand, but men's suits?
If you can't buy a product even if you can identify it, then what's the point? Do you have any thoughts on how to get around this problem? One idea that comes to mind is that you could use your data to build a ranking of how long clothing companies (or any companies) stick with their products. I'd certainly find it useful.
Best of luck!
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pri...
[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457717...