Resultly preps the launch of its realtime social search engine (invites)

It’s difficult to explain what Resultly is, founder and CEO Ilya Beyrak confides to me.

At its core, the stealth social search and notifications service is like “Google Alerts for the entire Internet”, he adds, noting that that’s the closest he and his international team come to describing Resultly in a nutshell.

Backed by $500k in seed funding, Resultly is building a platform that will let registered users create specific queries that consist of standard text attached to a certain category, and get relevant realtime alerts based on their ‘interests’.

At launch, the categories Resultly will support are quite diverse as the startup’s vision is to provide relevant realtime notifications for anything and not just, say, news about Apple or Microsoft. The list of supported categories will include Products, Finance, Travel, Deals, Social, Housing, Jobs, News and Cars.

Based on the category a user assigns to a query, he or she gets presented with some options to further narrow down their interest.

For Products, this can include dynamic pricing, condition, color and whatnot. When choosing the Travel category, a user can choose options like optimal travel date, specific destinations and price, for example.

Once a user’s interest are fed to the system, they will be able to follow any new information that surfaces, from across the Internet, virtually in real time.

People who are fond of babies, for example, can create a new interest in the Social category and receive instant notifications the second (or close enough) anyone within their social graph mentions something baby-related in a blog post or status update, or even when they upload an image or a video of a baby.

Notifications can be delivered via the Resultly website, mobile apps or by email.

In addition, there’s a social layer around Resultly, enabling members to interact with each other, comment on queries and results, and Beyrak tells me there are plans to add sharing and friend following functionalities at a later stage.

Based out of Chicago, Resultly is close to launching its product in early beta form on an invitation-only basis. The Next Web readers are in for a special treat – if you’re interested, you can sign up here and receive early access. You’re welcome.

I gather that Resultly is a Microsoft BizSpark startup (most of its software is built on .Net) but is keeping the names of its investors under wraps for now.

Beyrak was nice enough to send us a screenshot of the Web version they’re currently fleshing out (embedded aboveà, and some mock-ups of what the accompanying iPhone app may end up looking like (below).

More when the company is ready to unveil its service in a more public manner.

➤ Resultly sign-up page for early adopting TNW readers