Updated: Riya To Stop Searching
Riya, a San Mateo, Calif.-based visual search service, will shut down at the end of next week, according to an email sent to users this morning (and first reported by TechCrunch). Riya's parent company had raised around $55 million in VC funding since 2004, including a $32 million Series C round last August. Investors included Bay Partners, BlueRun Ventures, Crosslink Capital, First Round Capital, Leapfrog Ventures and Menlo Ventures. Update: We misinterpretted the original email, assuming it meant that the entire parent company was shutting down. It is not. Big apologies. Here's an email from CEO Munjal Shah: We are not shutting down the company Like.com just the website Riya (Riya is owned by Like.com). The company continues to focus on building Like.com and covet.com (new site we recently launched). Together these sites are generating over $20MM in yearly revenue for us and providing leads that help retailers sell over $100MM in merchandise per year. We will be profitable later this year. In terms of Riya we stopped focusing on the face recognition website years ago and while we had transitioned out focus and company name to Like.com, we had never shut it down until now.
