Exaggerations make for good headlines, but often are less than accurate. VentureBeat ran a post last night about audio and video search startup Pluggd, announcing that the company has raised $1.65 million in funding. The post also says that Pluggd declared it has “perfected the user experience” for audio and visual search. This morning, I came across this NewTeeVee post that sets the record straight:
While we like what Pluggd is doing, that’s a bit of an overstatement.
Video search is often attempted by analysis of the soundtrack, rather than the picture, and we expect that’s what’s going on here. But mainly, we take issue with the claim that anyone has “perfected the user experience” in this area, because a big part of user experience is having a product that works.
Writer Liz Gannes goes on to explain the obvious – that speech recognition technology is far from perfect (though it is getting better). I’m fairly certain that audio and video search will be perfected eventually, but not we’re not there yet.
To their credit, Pluggd commented on the NewTeeVee post:
Matt’s coverage of our technology on venturebeat.com is one of the most thoughtful and complete descriptions of our technology that I’ve seen, but I was also a little startled when I saw the word “perfected”.
While they have lots of work ahead of them, I am sure the new funding will help Pluggd improve their offering! I am looking forward to their technology going live.
Read: NewTeeVee
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