There are plenty of online options to compare almost anything you care to mention from kittens to cars, but there are very few who get right down to the bones of the matter comparing specs when it comes to choosing something to buy.
Berlin-based startup, URGE IO has created VERSUS IO, a comparison engine that draws on official specs from the manufacturer and strips out subjective information like opinions and matters of taste.
The site works in 17 languages and compares mostly tablets and phones for now. The site also offers users to compare items for size by adding a scaling tool. Not ones to shy away from a challenge, the company says it hopes to add 640 vertical comparisons from credit cards to real estate, plastic surgeons to banks.
The VERSUS engine is also primed to compare people eventually. Folk will be ranked by popularity, friends, networks, curriculum vitae and other details.
The plans for people ranking are interesting. VERSUS crawls for quantitative data of a person, creates a “PeopleRank” score a bit like to Google’s PageRank and makes comparisons available on all individuals properties.
Some sample properties include college and degree by using a global college ranking, a person’s job by analysing title, company via brand and popularity and overall career history. Industry specific properties are also taken into account such as the number of successful exits with entrepreneurs and VCs or with soccer players, the amount of games won.
The site is already seeing success and traffic has been growing by 60% and 500,000 unique visitors per month.
URGE was founded by Ramin G. Far, entrepreneur and angel investor. In the past, Far headed MTV Online North Europe.
VERSUS recently received €500K ($600k) from Hightech-Gruenderfonds and €200K ($240k) from JMES Investments in a first round. Prior to this the company has been boot-strapped.
A plan to rank all the things is a huge undertaking, especially while trying to keep presentation smooth and clean. However the future plans go, as a simple and refreshingly clear site, VERSUS will certainly go some way to please minimalists.
Image Credit: Marcin Wichary
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