When you go for a search on a search engine, what do you see ? You sure as hell get the exact search results. Google or any other SE points you in almost the right direction, and it does so by going through all of its algorithms, detecting your location, taking a good look at your search history, seeing your browsing patterns & previous searches, match relevant keywords, check through which Google account you are logged in, and then presenting you with results.

However, if the same search is done by a person sitting next to you, Google will show different results. Its algorithms will again go through your neighbour’s location, browsing history, account history, previous searches, keywords, and show a result, which Google thinks is more personalised for your neighbour.

Now think of a more human search, a perspective search, rather than thinking of a search “engine”. While that’s difficult to imagine unless you can see one, a Bangalore-based startup named Vibrant Cove, has developed, what they call, a perspective search engine.

So how do we actually define Vibrant Cove ? I asked this question to Vibrant Cove’s co-founder Sudhir Narisetty and this is what he says,

While we are more connected, we have been isolated in our assumptions and perspectives of the world.

It was around this point that we realized that in order to truly understand something we need to look at it from different points of view.

Vibrant Cove adds perspective to your usual internet search. When you search for something on Vibrant Cove, you get actual, authored articles/posts related to that subject. Its founders claims to have designed the platform, so as to give you exactly what you want and not something “close” or “near” to it.

And those results are same across all of Vibrant Cove’s users, thus creating an environment where every user is on the same page regarding a particular topic. It helps users escape that isolation, which unknowingly happens if you get mutually exclusive search results and are alien to what a friend of yours might have seen while searching.

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To explain Vibrant Cove’s working, let’s take an example where you wish to buy an iPhone and search the internet about how good is an iPhone camera.

Now, if you search-engine it, you get reviews from all sorts of blogs and tech-experts, which definitely are in-depth and comprehensive. But do you actually want to read a review, or would you rather prefer a photographer telling you about iPhone’s camera quality and lens configuration ? It’s the latter part you desire, but only if you could get that so easily.

With Vibrant Cove, you can.

That was just an example I took on at random. This searching problem arises even more often, because search engines rank the best content without any algorithmic editing, at least for the most part. That leads to not-so-relevant results under a wrapper called “personalisation”. quote-1

Vibrant Cove founders have taken a different approach, by including something called the “credibility test” in their algorithm. Sudhir explained me how that works,

We do something called “credibility test” with natural language processing, sentimental analysis and bunch of other custom code. What this does is, it helps us rank the content in a very humane way.

We analyze the text in a story and determine the keywords at first. This gives us an idea of what you’re talking about. Then we go a step deeper and figure out, the quality of the content. We have a beautiful user interface that lets you add links and videos. So see if your story is interactive and engaging with lots of text, links and images.

Vibrant Cove’s sentimental analysis is something which caught my immediate interest. Their sentimental analysis takes both, the positives and the negatives, into consideration. So when you search for that iPhone camera review, you’ll get both, a post by a professional who says “it’s awesome”, and from another one who says “its sucks”. Vibrant Cove then leaves it upto you, to decide which review you wish to go with.

Vibrant Cove also offers a  user analytical tool, called “Percentage of Knowledge“, doing exactly what it says, analysing a person’s knowledge level and showing it in terms of percentage. They analyse that by recording your activity through various data points.

The startup, founded in 2013, is currently in closed Beta, with over 5000 users testing and using the product on a frequent basis. You can’t go and search on it right now, but you can ask to get a username reserved for the same. Vibrant Cove is boot-strapped and is run by a team of three.


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