You've Seen Bing? Check Out Spezify

Since Microsoft's release of Bing last month, there has been much discussion from marketing, business, and technology news sources (or opinion sources) about how Bing performs. In particular, how Bing performs in comparison to #1 search engine Google.

At the risk of merely adding to the hullabaloo, I would like to recognize another newly debuted - and not yet as well-known - search engine, Spezify.

Spezify.com, released on June 15, takes a different approach to presenting information. Rather than showing search results as a list of text links, Spezify displays a non-linear collection of images, video, blogs, news feeds, tweets, and articles from all over the Web. The effect is a smorgasbord of content, arranged rather like a bulletin board. Spezify also generates a list of related search terms for probing further.

According to Spezify founders Felix af Ekenstam and Per Persson (both of Sweden), Spezify is about "Inspired Search." It certainly seems that Spezify is great for exploration - for learning and discovering information in various media from a plethora of sources.

Do I think that Spezify take over the likes of Google, Yahoo, Ask, Dogpile, and Bing? No; I think Spezify is suited for a different purpose. Spezify is perfect for gathering information and discovering interesting content from a variety of sources. However, since Spezify assigns no order of importance, relevance, or credibility to its search results (a task that arguably is responsible for Google's dominance among search engines), Spezify is not the place to search for, say, the website of your favorite musician, or directions for your road trip, or places to purchase a new laptop.

Perhaps this differentiation of purpose is the exact feature that will enable Spezify to thrive alongside, rather than compete with, Google.