Kwiry, "the remind yourself to do a search about something later" company, is closing up shop next week. According to a company blog post, the service is shutting itself down due to "economic realities."
In the meantime, users are kindly being given the next 10 days to grab all their previous searches, which can be saved as a CSV file and exported into other reminder services.
I hate to see the site go, but it was a concept that was a hard sell to casual users. Aimed at users without smartphones (or data plans), it started out as a way to remember to do a search for something when back at a computer. In fact, it did the search for you. It then branched off into a reminder tool, and a quick way to add TV shows directly to your TiVo lineup or a movie to your Netflix queue.
Where there could have been some hope for the service is a reduction in the price of text messages. However, that's a trend that's been going in the other direction since 2005. Between that and the increasing saturation of smartphone users with data plans, the company was likely fighting an uphill battle and losing to traditional mobile-friendly search engines, or to free voice-powered search services such as GOOG-411 and Microsoft's Live Search 411.
The message sent to users via e-mail, announcing the shutdown.
(Credit: Kwiry Inc.)Previously:
Forget about remembering with Kwiry's SMS-based social search tool
Forget-me-not service Kwiry adds photo nagging
Kwiry puts Netflix, Amazon in your pocket
Kwiry, the memory-saving tool I wrote about back in December, has just put out a useful update for people who don't like to type. Users can now send photos to their Kwiry stream in hopes of digging up a search for it later. The company is hoping people will use this to catalog things they come across in everyday life, and bookmark them for later like people do with links on services like Delicious and Magnolia.
Kwiry's creators insist this isn't a photo-hosting service--just a tool to help people dig up more information about something they've seen while out and about. Up until now the service's core approach has revolved around text, either via SMS or the mobile Web. The workflow for users who upload photos is very different; instead of building up a group of searches related to what you've sent, your picture will simply sit there unless you've entered text or a note to beef up the notation. This means users must try to identify what they were trying to remember, or have their friends help them out by doing some of the grunt work for them.
To complement the idea of taking pictures while away from a computer the site has amped up its mobile offerings, with a more lightweight version of its mobile page for both standard mobile phones and Apple's iPhone. The experience is a little more dynamic than the simple SMS system that was in place beforehand--my only qualm is that if you've got an iPhone or other mobile device with a good browser handy you can simply look something up on the spot. The service's creators are hoping people will simply bookmark it for later perusal if only to provide a backward stream of searches and saved items users can come back to at a later date.
Kwiry now lets you add photos as well as text notes that you can search for later. In this case, clicking on the Yelp button on the right would let you hunt down reviews and ratings for Mama's.
(Credit: Kwiry)
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