[News] Introducing Portl

Portl is a new search engine that is currently only available in New Zealand. Portl is a search engine that you can tune into like a TV. For whatever topic you like, Portl creates a dynamic channel of content: videos, tweets, pictures and articles from 10 of the web’s best sources (Twitter, Instagram, Wikipedia, YouTube, Vimeo, the New York Times, Google Images, Songkick, TVNZ and YouTube Live). In contrast, Google search displays results from millions of websites.

Portl is great for News, Music, TV Shows, Films, Celebrities, Sports, History, Comedy, Politics and more ­basically, anything that’s interesting or entertaining.

Portl was founded by four internet entrepreneurs, Thomas Purnell­Fisher in San Francisco (formerly a director at Netflix and YouTube/Google), Mike Troughton from the UK (formerly founder of Wefund), Colleen Kelly Henry, and Rodrigo Sieiro from Brazil.

They claim that Google’s search results are “ugly” and claim that Portl is for users that like “rich media” on their devices.

The Portl search engine is currently only available for the iPad and the iPhone version should be released in a couple of weeks time. Android devices will get it after the iPhone version and finally the web. There was no mention about an app for the other mobile systems i.e Windows Phone, BlackBerry etc.

Thomas Purnell­Fisher, founder of Portl, says they have decided to launch in New Zealand first because us {New Zealanders} are very “tech savvy and open-minded.”

“New Zealanders are tech savvy and open minded, but they also have quite particular tastes;­ 47 of the top 50 TV shows in New Zealand were locally produced, for example, so you can’t just serve up any old foreign fair. It’s the perfect place to launch, learn about and improve what we’re offering.”

To try out Portl, please visit: http://portl.it/

Comments