About

Vivisimo Inc. is an enterprise software company

• Creates innovative software to access and cluster the world’s information,

for better search and discovery

• Founded June ’00 in Pittsburgh, 22 employees, sustained profitability

– Organic growth, no venture capital funding

• About 80 customers: Cisco, JNJ, NSA, JAMA, Micropatent, AOL, AAAS, etc.

Clusty.com, acclaimed web search engine

• Launched on Sept 30 of last year

Raul Valdes-Perez, CEO & co-founder

• Last Stop: Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Dept (1986-2000)

Bookstores versus Electronic World

Bookstores and Libraries • Stack of books on the floor?• No. Books are categorized on shelves• Categories are better for bookseller & book buyers

Why Not the Same in Electronic World?• Print-world model too costly & complicated

– Based on Dewey Decimal System ideas & taxonomy building

• Electronic world still in the “stack of books on the floor” mode• Vivisimo has disruptive technology (clusteringclustering) to fix this

Vivisimo creates innovative software …• to access and cluster the world’s information• for better search and discovery• We aim to be the Intel Inside of the search industry.

End User Benefits of Clustering

User Benefits

#1 See what's availableAt a glance, the folders show you an information landscape.

#2 See much furtherFollowing our interests, we navigate to low-ranked but interesting search results, which we're unlikely ever to see otherwise.

#3 See similar information togetherWe don't have to be satisfied with the first reference we come across. We can compare several and pick the best one.

Key Advantages

#1 Works on the fly No need for pre-processing#2 Spontaneous categories no need to pre-define them

Commentary

“This [Clustering Engine] is a … technology that, in the long term, we would expect to become part of almost all search engines.”

Cool Vendors in Advanced Information Management Alexander Linden et al. (Gartner)

“… specialized search tools can improve on Google’s results. My favorite is Vivisimo, founded by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, which clusters search results into useful categories rather than putting them in one big list.”

James Fallows, New York Times

“Another common prediction, and one that falls in line with usability, is for the increased adoption of clustering technology. America Online is already offering clustering via its Vivisimo partnership. [Gartner analyst Alan] Weiner, for one, said he's hooked on clustering …”

Jennifer LeClaire, Ecommerce Times

Clusty the Clustering Engine

“Perhaps the most disgusting brand name out there”

“The problem with this new search engine, is the name what kind of name is Clusty? I can see how they came up with it, "hey we cluster results, so let's call ourselves Clusty." The problem is, it's brings to mind too many negative images, like crusty or maybe worse, lusty.”

“… recently launched a Web search service under the dopey name of Clusty.”

“… the awkward name … conjures images of Crusty the Crab from The Incredible Mr. Limpet (or the Simpsons Clown, depending on your tastes) ...”

“I don't see crusty, I see busty. I definitely don't like the name.”

Clustering, Query Refinement, Personalization, or Entity Extraction?

Query Refinement - Show alternative queries to the user• Pro: little computation, don’t need search results as input• Con

– History-based, not matched to search results, relevance is a challenge– Click on a query, your screen disappears, absorb new context

Personalization • Pro: it’s about you!• Con

– People’s interests aren’t static (Olympics, Oscars, Tsunamis, etc.)– Shared computers lead to shared “personalization”

Clustering• Pro: content can come from anywhere, spontaneous categories• Con: need a good 100+ search results, unpredictable categories

Some Licensees of Clustering Engine

Non-Vivisimo

Meta-Search

Installation

Meta-Search

Output

Lots of scrolling!

Clustered

Search

Results

Alternatively,

Cluster by Sources

Scale Up to Many Sources

Vivisimo for Corporate Libraries

Meta-Search: “One Query Visits All” Eliminates …• Need to be aware of the available sources• Need to learn multiple search syntaxes• Tedium of searching many individual sources + combining results

Improved Decision Making (CIO Update paper)• Employees bring into view 10-50x more information• Guaranteed time savings: User Model

Clustering Solves the Meta-Search Information Overload• Categorized search results without cross-source taxonomies

Optimize Your Publications Budget• Reporting Tool gives precise statistics on usage of licensed sources

Achieve the Above with Simple, Non-Invasive Overlay

Old Way of Thinking

If a search returns many hits, then you’re a novice• Most patrons/users are novice searchers!

New way• Purposely start out with broad searches• Learn something by viewing the results• Use what you learned to search again• Find what you’re looking for … • … or discover what you’d normally miss

Clustering Will Go Mainstream in 2005-06

Why? Critical Mass of Installations and Buzz

• AOL + Clusty reach about 10% of web searches

Unbeatable Value Proposition

• Instant organized information without taxonomies

Real End-User Benefits

• Users can consider lots more info with the same effort

• Makes people smarter!

Meta-Search without clustering worsens overload

Transform online world of information

• Less like 1-person used bookstore with piles of books

• Look more like Barnes & Noble or Borders