Alibaba has given it a name in Chinese "Tuxiang", but in English Alibaba is tentatively calling it “Imagine" the service is a way for users to buy the clothing they see in advertisements or in celebrity photos, said Alibaba spokeswoman Florence Shih.
“We were hoping to give customers another channel to look for products, especially if you have an idea of what you would like to find but don’t know the keywords,” she said.
The service is currently limited to apparel, shoes and bags and let shoppers uploaded to the b2b website by using URL of image on some other websites or from their computer. Once a picture is uploaded to the website, either from a computer or a web link to the image, users select the category of product they want to search for. The service then attempts to find the best product matches in the Taobao Mall and Taobao Marketplace, Alibaba's online e-commerce sites. The results appear as a breakdown of more than a dozen different products shown as images with price comparisons.
The new image service came after a third-party developer team won an Alibaba-sponsored competition in January 2010 to create applications. the team then worked in cooperation with Alibaba to develop the search service.
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