Time Buys Style Recognition Engine

You’ve heard of search engines, but what about recognition engines?

Not yet? Well, we have a feeling you won’t be able to avoid them as the year goes on.

Recognition engines use pattern recognition technology to figure out what you like – and then suggest products that are tailored to your tastes. They’re also the latest way magazine publishers are trying to make a buck and stay afloat.

Time Warner Inc. officially announced today its acquisition of the style recognition engine StyleFeeder, a Site that offers “personal shopping recommendations” on everything from boots to books. The purchase is part of Time’s master plan to open up a revenue stream from e-commerce (and not depend on advertising revenue as much).

StyleFeeder is all set to be incorporated into InStyle’s Web Site and may eventually pop up in other Time magazines too – which we’re all for. You can easily spend hours searching for cool stuff and rating items on StyleFeeder – trust us. It’s a bit of a miracle we tore ourselves away to write this post at all…

We do have a feeling there’s one company that won’t be popping the champagne corks at the news: Sugar Inc’s ShopStyle currently powers the shopping search for InStyle in the US and UK. We’re just thinking out loud here, but if Time drops ShopStyle in favor of Style Feeder (which would make sense), ShopStyle is left with CondeNast’s Style.com as its largest fashion publishing partner. This could still be safe though – given the recent chainsaw taken to budgets and substantial cuts, we’re not sure CondeNast is ready to go on a buying spree to acquire the company or provide the type of capital necessary to develop their own competitor. We’re going to enjoy staying up to date on this one.

Read More {TechCrunch}

Read More {Wall Street Journal}