PLEASANTON, CA – (February 25, 2010) – LeapFish, an evolved search engine, announced today the integration of Topsy into its real-time search results. Consumers can now identify the most popular, relevant and influential results on the real-time web.

Topsy is a search engine that finds the most talked about links on Twitter and organizes them by popularity and influence. Topsy’s index is available via its extensive open API called Otter, which powers LeapFish’s integration.

LeapFish’s real-time search empowers consumers with immediate access to live news, video and imagery for any real time topic.  Now through the integration of Topsy, LeapFish curates the Twitter stream into a powerful list of the most popular and influential links being shared in the real-time web.

“Real-time search just became a lot better,” said LeapFish CEO, Behnam Behrouzi.  “With Topsy’s aggregation intelligence, LeapFish users now have the most popular and influential links on Twitter identified for them,” said Behrouzi.

“LeapFish’s integration of Topsy’s ranked results provides a great example of the power and potential of the Otter API,” said Vipul Ved Prakash, CEO of Topsy. “Topsy is excited to support LeapFish’s innovative approach to providing users access to the hottest and best content,” said Prakash.

To learn more about the newest additions to the site, visit http://www.leapfish.com.

About LeapFish:

LeapFish is an evolved search engine that captures the traditional, multi-media and real-time Web, through a single, connected search platform for both searching and sharing content.  LeapFish is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton, California.  For more information, visit blog.leapfish.com.

About Topsy:

Topsy is a next-generation search platform powered by the social web. Based in San Francisco, Topsy is a privately held company founded by Vipul Ved Prakash, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, and Gary Iwatani. For more information, visit labs.topsy.com/about/.

Your search homepage is no longer just a simple search bar staring up at you, waiting for text to be entered. It’s your start page, your home on the web, the place to go when you want to find what’s going on in the world and in your world, online and off. With Leapfish customizable homepages, users can add and organize their experience on the web in just minutes with a dynamic and efficient interface.

LeapFish was carefully designed with your personal search and browsing needs in mind,  with Facebook connect you can easily set up a profile in minutes, once registered users can add and organize widgets with the unique drag n’ drop functionality.

Click on “Customize Homepage” in the upper-right of LeapFish.com to set your homepage layout to match your specific interests. If you prefer celebrity news, select the US Weekly News widget. If you prefer up-to-the-minute tech news, add the Wired News, TechCrunch and Mashable widgets. Sports fanatics even have a home at LeapFish and can track top sports stories with the Yahoo Sports Widget. For the social media fanatics, users can stay connected to their social web with Yelp Search, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter widgets.  The Twitter and Facebook applications provide a single interface to interact with friends and followers simultaneously from one page. Both applications allow users to search and follow friends on specific topics and you can easily tweet or update your Facebook status.

To fully customize your LeapFish experience, set up a LeapFish homepage. It’s an easy way to connect your social web and search. There’s no place like LeapFish.com, your new home on the web.

The social media community is now beginning to use their influence to increase awareness of causes world wide. The Silicon Valley TweetUp that took place on January 20th, at the beautiful Valencia Hotel in the heart of Silicon Valley, surpassed expectations of TweetUp Hosts Michael Brito, VP of Social Media at Edelman Digital & Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet Social Business Blogger.

The Team’s goal was to raise $1000.00 for Epic Change’s Twitterkids of Tanzania, due to the unexpected turnout and enthusiasm for Shel Israel’s book signing, the team was able to hand a $2300.00 check to Sanjay Patel Co-Founder of Epic change who flew in from Florida for the event.

Silicon Valley Tweetup events are attended by a mix of some of the Bay Areas most talented and well-connected networkers. From top influencers, to social media and marketing professionals, to engineers and venture capital reps, to CEOs and entrepreneurs. Attendees were excited to engage and discuss LeapFish and it’s integration of top social media content providers while contributing to a great cause.

Our team at LeapFish would like to extend a big thank you & congratulations to Michael Brito, Jennifer Leggio and Epic Change for putting together another succesful event. Great Work!

The dawn of a new era in search has arrived. To make search relevant for today’s web user, any player hoping to stay relevant in the search space can no longer ignore real-time search. The dominant search players, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo have taken note, each rushing to launch real-time search features and stay in the game.

This month, Google announced that its relevance-ranking search algorithms are now being used to sort through live posts on Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and, of course, Twitter. Google understands how important it is to be a leader in real-time search if they hope to remain on top of search in 2010.

Following the lead of Google, last week Yahoo added a real-time search function into its search results late. Yahoo said whenever there is a “spike” in interest in a particular topic across the Web, its search algorithms would be able to detect that and would mix relevant tweets about that topic into standard search results. With a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing almost finalized, the two companies will need to face Google and other real-time search players head on for a chance in the next generation of search.

Launched in November, LeapFish’s real-time search engine was at the start of the real-time search trend that has heated up over the last month. Our successful promotional video (below) for LeapFish’s November launch was followed by promotional videos from some of the biggest names (above) on the web marketing real-time search and what it means to our new web.

It is very clear that the quest for relevant sources of real time content will become increasingly sought after. Integrating micro blogging sites such as Twitter is only the beginning, new channels of communication will continue to add relevancy to our search experience online acting as a catalyst for change and innovation.

We are more connected and involved in the evolution and growth of the web than we ever were before.  The new web is here and it will not wait, however it will require new tools to interact with the web that you love.

A few months ago LeapFish sponsored one of the first Silicon Valley Tweet Ups. Last night due to the positive response generated at TweetUps in the past, LeapFish was invited to do a live demo for 200+ technology enthusiasts in San Francisco.

The San Francisco New Tech MeetUp is a premiere networking community sponsored by the New York Times & Mashable. The MeetUp attracts the likes of VCs, journalists, hackers, techies, recruiters, CEOs, and bloggers, with a running total of 5 thousand active members.

BBC News describes SF New Tech as “a networking event in which the -next big thing- in web developments meets the audience looking out for the hot new tip.”

Last night was an event to remember, SFNewTech set a personal record with 7 companies presenting and LeapFish had the opportunity to close out the event and end the year strong with a very interactive demo!

Key influencers in the media attending the MeetUp were excited to engage and discuss LeapFish. In the end LeapFish received a positive response and the question of the night was “Are you hiring!?” The Team at LeapFish is proud to say we are hiring, growing and will continue to innovate your search experience online.

In closing our team at LeapFish would like to extend a big thank you to Myles Weissleder, for putting on another successful San Francisco New Tech MeetUp. We would also like to congratulate Twilio , Cubetree , PSD2CSS Online , Useful or Waste , Zuora , & Fido Factor on great presentations. Great Work and we’ll see you all in 2010!

The article covered the partnership between The Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation and LeapFish that raised $10,000 to send a 4-year-old ill boy to Disneyland.

Excerpt from the Article:

Regarding the use of Social Media to promote Charities, ” It only takes a couple of moments a day to change the world…LeapFish, a Pleasanton search engine, has pledged to donate $10,000 if 100,000 Twitter messages are generated.”

Click here to read the article on SFGate.com:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=52391

Excerpt from the Article:

“The core functionality of LeapFish is still search, but the search box now has two buttons: ‘Real Time’ and ‘Search Web.’ The ‘Real Time’ button leads to a mosaic of real time results: News, trending topics, relevant top stories on Digg, fresh tweets and video results. In spite of the large amount of information, the search results are easy to navigate.”

Click here to read the entire Pandia Search Engine News article:

http://www.pandia.com/sew/2250-search-the-real-time-web-with-leapfish.html

The hosts of Webmaster Radio’s Townhall Radio podcast spoke with Ben Behrouzi to learn about the new LeapFish social search engine.  Behrouzi unveiled LeapFish’s multi-media and real-time search, communication and sharing platform, and discussed why and how search needs to change to keep up with today’s living, social web.

Excerpt from the Podcast:

“This is a major leap forward in the way we look at major applications we use everyday. I use web search everyday, I use social media, I am looking for video, audio and social media results. In my world, having it at my fingertips immediately is critical and finally someone has done something about it… LeapFish.”

“You’ve worked around the information overload problem. You guys are packing a ton of information on the page and it doesn’t feel too busy.”

“Having the real-time search features that give me direct access to breaking information.”

Listen to Part 1 of the interview here:

Listen to Part 2 of the interview here:

Listen to Part 3 of the interview here:

Click here to hear the entire Webmaster Radio podcast:

http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/townhall-meeting/2009/leapfish-launches-real-time-social-search-engine/

Excerpt from the Article:

“It is irritating that many searches, especially those with commercial implications, are increasingly dominated by ‘search engine optimisers’ paid to get their company’s results at the top of the stack. Sometimes we don’t just want to see what’s at the top of the haystack but the needle that is buried somewhere inside that no one has linked to. In recent weeks I have been impressed by LeapFish (which) combines real time search with sharing over social networks.”

Click here to read the entire Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/11/searching-beyond-google

Excerpt from the Article:

“The site offers some very interesting possibilities. It has some similarities to iGoogle but has managed to integrate social media faster than the search giant ”

Click here to read the entire Search Engine Watch Article:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/091112-224356