Rippol – Impressive Personalized Video Search & Recommendation Service

Every species of search engine has the adjective ‘intelligent’ added somewhere. With the complex coding and algorithms that go into their making, they just might be.

The web is a huge ocean of media content these days. To cast a wide net and fish for the most relevant results does need some amount of programming magic. Search engines and cataloging websites are made and broken on the single yardstick of significance – does the result match the query?

Rippol is a beta service and an intelligent video search engine across the length and breadth of the web. It sources videos from channels like Revision3, Hulu, CNN, Fox, Amazon, MSNBC, Netflix, Joost, YouTube, Justin TV, Last.Fm and MTV.

That didn’t really intrigue me when I first heard about the site. What did was their technology that attempts to make it easy for you and me find our choice of videos on the web.

Rippol uses what it calls the Butterfly Effect Network, its own standardized technology.

In general terms, a Butterfly Effect is a minor change in initial causes which leads to a large change in outcome. Sort of like a snowball effect. In Rippol’s usage, every user affects the others in the Rippol network by the way he watches, reviews and rates the videos. That is, each user’s watching habits influences the video discovery engine.

For instance, I might like to watch shows that deal with sci-fi. The algorithm will cross reference my choice with what others are watching (and liking) in real time, and present me with options that reflect what’s popular close to my tastes. In the end, each user gets a search experience tailored to one’s unique tastes.

The Rippol ‘How it Works’ graphic explains the concept of this video search engine –

So let’s send out the discovery engine to see if Rippol can float like a butterfly through the web.

On registration and logging into the site, we have to fill out basic profile details and suggest a few of our favorite shows. The user home page is the console for all activities.

Rippol gives us three things to do –

• Discover TV shows, movies, live video and clips from all over the Internet.
• Watch them in the media player.
• Share videos by email, Twitter or Facebook, Live Chat and Friendcast.

Out of these three…discovering media is the supposed USP for the web service. There are many ways to discover new content to watch. You can do some fluky watching by catching what others are discovering through the Social Stream. Carry out a deliberate search by clicking on the Search link on top or clicking on any one of the categories next to it. Then drill down a bit from there.

But the Butterfly Effect Network comes into its own when you click on Discover and it brings to you personalized content calculated according to its technology.

Click on any choice…watch it or save it to a playlist. You can do the other usual stuff like favorite it and recommend it to others via Rippol, email or Facebook. The other way to promote your choice is by giving it a thumbs up straight from the video thumbnail.

Social communication via Friendcast, Facebook and Twitter is usual given for most sites these days, so I won’t go too much into that. Rippol is all about the Butterfly Effect Network. Does it get you the video you want?

It does throw up a lot of interesting choices and it’s definitely a new way to search for video. Being a beta service and spanking fresh off the blocks, it will definitely take time to build up the social component. Mass is important because the search algorithm does take in recommendations from the others in the social network. A critical mass of users would help to fine-tune the search experience and make it all of one’s own.

Try out the Rippol video search engine. See if your tastes match what it throws up. And if it does, do spread the good word about the shows and the site.