Biggerpan Aims To Revolutionize The Way People Search

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Biggerpan is a browser extension that helps users discover relevant content recommendations based on the context of the pages they are browsing on. They can easily find more interesting content without searching for it. It also allows users to perform searches without needing to leave their current browsing page. Below is our interview with Eric Poindessault, CEO of Biggerpan:

Q: For those who have never heard of it, how would you describe Biggerpan?

A: Biggerpan is an augmented browsing app that redefines the experience of web search. It consists in a browser extension that has two main features: the app automatically displays relevant content recommendations based on the context of the page you are browsing on, so you can find more interesting content without searching for it, and it also allows you to perform searches without ever leaving your current page. The latest search you made remains associated with your browsing window and you can have it instantly displayed on top of the page. That means no more juggling with dozens of tabs nor constantly hitting the back button. And last but not least, you can also access a list of all the searches you made across your open tabs. Just click on one of them and it brings you back to where you left it.

Q: What was your inspiration for developing Biggerpan?

A: Before starting this venture I was in finance and the company I worked for had this new intranet tool that we used to obtain financial data on companies. The tool itself was powerful but the user experience was terrible. As I’ve been coding stuff since I was a kid, I figured I should do something to improve it, and that’s how I discovered that user scripts and browser extensions could detect the loading of a web page and access its content. Later I asked myself, ‘what if there were a tool that analyzed in real time the content of any loading page and recommended related videos and press articles?’ I investigated the business opportunity then decided to quit my job and started working on it.

Q: What was the most challenging part of developing it?

A: We’re not the first company who’s been working on this idea. Google released a similar product a few years ago, it was called Google Related and it didn’t get much traction so it quickly got discontinued. I believe one of the most important aspects for products to be massively adopted is the experience they offer, and in our case it’s not an easy thing to design because the interface has to be discreet yet always accessible. People are not willing to pollute their screen estate with some invasive and unnecessary toolbar, so we had to be very innovative to develop an easy-to-use and unobtrusive interface. That was definitely our greatest challenge.

Q: What can we expect from you in the future? What are your plans?

A: For now we’ve only released our beta for Firefox and we’ll keep improving it for a few months until we can move to a public release. Then we’ll adapt Biggerpan on other platforms, Chrome being obviously next on our list. We’re also planning to add more types of content to our contextual discovery feature, including results from social networks as well as ecommerce deals and offers.

Q: Are you also planning to go on mobile?

A: Search on mobile is a totally different approach and there’s certainly a lot to do in that field. We do have plans for mobile on the longer run but for now I think it’s important that we focus our efforts to satisfy our desktop users.

Q: How would you convince our readers to start using Biggerpan?

A: Well I would just tell them to give it a try, it takes 5 seconds to install and it will definitely make their lives easier.