Let The News Find You: ...

Keeping up with the news is pretty much a full-time job these days. Thankfully, recommendation services like Zite and Flipboard have figured out some ways of keeping their users informed without overloading them with information. Ideally, though, a recommendation service wouldn’t just learn about the articles you read in a certain app and what you or your friends share on Twitter or Facebook, but it would also look at what you read in your browser throughout the day. Msgboy is trying to do just that. It reads what you read as you browse the Internet and automatically subscribes you to the sites you regularly visit. It then ranks new stories based on how interesting they will likely be for you and notifies you whenever it detects a new and potentially interesting story. Msgboy only works in Chrome right now, but will soon support other browsers as well. The company behind Msgboy is Superfeedr , which is better known for providing real-time feed publishing and ingesting infrastructure to developers and publishers than consumer-facing products. I talked to Superfeedr’s founder Julien Genestoux earlier this week and he noted that Msgboy wants to be a “new kind of homepage” that learns from its users’ actions and shows them the news they missed while they were away from their computers. At the same time, though it is also a way to bring the power of technologies like PubSubHubbub, XMPP and websockets to regular users, as well as a way to improve Superfeedr’s own infrastructure. Msgboy, Genestoux told me, helps Superfeedr understand what’s popular or which feeds are likely spam, for example, and then surface this information to its own subscribers (all while ensuring its users’ privacy, of course). While Msgboy will try to understand your preferences by itself, it also offers users +/- buttons to voice their preferences. I found that a little bit of training goes a long way in helping the service give significantly better recommendations. Msgboy’s code and database isn’t stored in the cloud, by the way. It only runs in your browser – not on the service’s own servers. Another nice privacy-related aspect of the service is that it’s completely open source. If you’re so inclined, you can get the code from GitHub and compile it yourself. Given that Msgboy always watches over your shoulder as you browse the web, making the code open source should make users feel more secure about running it without the fear of divulging their private data to a third party. Genestoux gave us 250 invites for our readers. Just click here to download the Chrome plugin and claim yours (note: the download will immediately start after you click on the link).

Brayola Wants To Help W...

For many women finding the right bra is a challenge. Enter Israeli startup Brayola , a new site that aims to make it easier for women to find their next favorite bra. Brayola helps women find their perfect bra size and discover new bras that match the style she likes. Founder Orit Hashay explains that online stores currently rely on e-commerce software fails to consider how important bras are to women, and that finding a bra is a highly personal experience. Additionally, an ill-fitting bra can cause serious discomfort, including back pain and other problems. The result is that most online shoppers buy a bra that they already own, since they are familiar with the brand. Brayola takes a different approach. The website helps women find bras by asking them a simple question: “What is the bra that you love to wear?” When a Brayola user first gets started with the service, she is asked to create her own personal Brayola drawer. This is a collection of bras that she already owns and loves, that fit perfectly, and match her own personal style. Brayola then looks at the bras a user has selected, and finds other users in the system who own the same bras with the same size. Brayola employs its bra fitter technology, a smart recommendation algorithm, to suggest new bras from e-commerce sites for the user based on the preferences of similar women. Brayola gives each user a custom set of virtual drawers filled with different styles and types of bras. Each bra is chosen especially for the user based on her Brayola bra size. Brayola aggregates bras to purchase from a number of different sites including Macy’s, Amazon, and others. You actually purchase the bras through the retailers’ sites but in the future you’ll be able to buy through Brayola. Brayola has received seed funding from Roi Mor and Shahar Smirin.

No Name, No Email, No P...

Seattle and London-based nFluence Media emerged from two years of stealth mode to announce it has raised $3 million for a deal-targeting technology whose first application will be a daily deal aggregating iPhone app, due out later this month. However, the company is not necessarily just another player in the overly crowded “daily deals” space. Instead, the technology being funded here is an anonymous self-profiling system that can expand into other verticals, including future uses with mobile carriers, cable/satellite TV operators and shopping mall owners. The new round was led by  Voyager Capital (Bill McAleer) with contributions from 17 angels in the Alliance of Angels . Along with the news, comes the announcement that Tom Huseby will be chairman of the board at nFluence. Huseby and nFluence co-founder Brian Roundtree (CTO) know each other from previous collaborations at SnapIn , where Roundtree was CTO. That company was later acquired by Nuance Media for $235M back in 2008. nFluence’s other co-founder and CEO is Henry Lawson, also the Chairman of MediaEquals and Cogniti. The forthcoming iPhone app called dealBoard, due out in February, will be unique in the deal aggregating space because it will allow users to build a consumer profile without submitting any personal information. That means no names, no email addresses, no zip codes and no phone numbers. To build up consumers’ preferences, the app’s users will be walked through the company’s proprietary “brand sorter” technology, which from the sounds of it, makes detailing your preferences about shopping behaviors and interests into something more akin to a game than a traditional quiz. The idea that you could receive daily deals without opting in to deal spam will appeal to the more privacy-minded and those who simply want a better way to access deals.  Imagine: no more unwanted emails about “spa packages” and “25% off kiteboarding lessons” which you delete on arrival. Hooray! But to be clear, information about you is being collected, including that which you voluntarily share, location info, your phone’s OS, browser and unique ID, your likes and dislikes, demographic info, etc. – it’s just not being linked to your personal information and identity. “People don’t like most email and marketing and rightfully so,” says CEO Henry Lawson, “they are inundated with unwanted, mistargeted or stalker-like ads, offers and messages. With our technology, we’re able to return control of a consumer’s profile to the person it belongs to, the consumer, not some technology black box.” nFluence isn’t the only company to think to aggregate and target deals – that’s both Yipit’s and Google Offers’ game plan, too. The difference is that those competitors aren’t targeting the offers anonymously as nFluence plans to. The dealBoard mobile application is said to pull in over 35,000 offers, including those from retailers and deal providers like Groupon, LivingSocial and Gilt Groupe. For obvious reasons, no emails will be sent – the offers appear within the app only, according to user preferences. More details as to the specifics of how this technology will work will be available alongside the new app’s launch. In the future, nFluence Media plans to expand the technology to other companies that want to target consumers, but who don’t need to collect personally identifiable information to do so.

Ticketmaster’s New Face...

Of all the new Open Graph apps launched tonight, Ticketmaster’s new Facebook experience is the most impressive. Sure it can share that you’ve “bought” tickets, but lots of apps have similar publishing functionality. What makes Ticketmaster’s app cool is that it pulls your Facebook profile’s music app activity from services such as Spotify or Rdio, and recommends nearby concerts of artists you actually listen to, not just those you say you Like. Ticketmaster has come a long way in the two years since Nathan Hubbard became CEO following its merger with LiveNation . It now shows you its service fees up front rather than tacking them on as you checkout. This pissed off artists and venues who thought it would scare away sales, but Ticketmaster did it in the name of transparency. Executive VP of ecommerce Kip Levin tells me that for a long time the company was scapegoat for all of the live event industry’s problems. Now it’s pushing back and putting the customers first — something people might not expect just because it charges those pesky service fees. In August Ticketmaster began allowing you to tag the seats your purchase with your Facebook profile . That way friends who are deciding what seats to buy can see where yours are select ones close to you. People are a lot more willing to buy a single ticket to an assigned seat show if they can sit next to their friends. This is one example of how optimizing for the customer experience can also benefit the company’s bottom line. Ticketmaster’s new canvas app brings the entire event discovery and ticket purchase flow within Facebook. You’re shown a feed of concerts your friends have RSVP’d to or shared that they’ve bought tickets to, followed by personal recommendations. Thanks to Facebook data permissions, it can suggest nearby events based on your Likes and listening activity without having to ask your preferences. Several competitors launched Facebook Open Graph ticketing  apps including Ticketfly , but none provide listening-based recommendations or interactive seat maps. Many web services that release Facebook apps primarily use the social network as a distribution and marketing channel. The best ones, like Ticketmaster, request your personal data and responsibly apply it make their products better. It’s already working. I was just suggested an upcoming show by one of my favorite bands Neon Indian , who I listen to a lot but never got around to Liking.

Facebook Launches Sugge...

We’re creatures of habit. We go where we’ve already gone. That’s why Facebook’s new Suggested Events feature I just discovered is so powerful — it knows where we’ve been thanks to our checkins. Replacing the old Friends’ Events sub-tab of the home page’s Events bookmark, Suggested Events helps you discover things to do that take place at venues you’ve checked in to, that friends are RSVP’d to, that are hosted by Pages you Like, or a combination. The feature could reduce the need third-party event discovery apps, and get more people out of their houses to attend concerts, club nights, and conferences. By promoting offline interaction, Suggested Events should quiet critics who say Facebook weakens real human relationships and leads people to sit at home. It has huge potential to generate good will for Facebook and make the service seem even more indispensable. If you go to a great show, have a fun night out with friends, or meet someone new at a suggested venue, your perception of Facebook’s value to your life will undoubtedly improve. Sure, you should branch out and find new places to go, but new events at your favorite places are still unique experiences. The feature exposes you to events that are relevant and that you might drag friends to, even if you weren’t invited to them and don’t have friends already RSVP’d. “What should I do tonight?” is a very prevalent question lots of startups are trying to answer. Just this month we covered the launch of UpOut for real-time discovery, and SeatGeek’s Columbus that’s a “Pandora for live events”. Established players include Plancast and EventBrite , the latter of which closed a huge $50 million funding round and also suggests events your Facebook friends are going to. But the problem with these services is that they can’t produce as relevant suggestions because they don’t automatically know where you spend your time, which is a proxy for what type of events you go to. Facebook’s Suggested Events adapts to your preferences. I go to lots of concerts, and Facebook effectively knows this because I check in to the venues or the events themselves thanks to a  mobile feature added last year (possibly to collect data for this). Now, Suggested Events recommends me concerts taking place at my favorite venues. The music industry stands to gain a lot from the feature, since concerts are thrown frequently, and occur at Places people commonly check in to. If you’re in college, Suggested Events might recommend parties at campus dorms, whereas professionals might get clued in to meetups or conferences at local convention halls they visit. The feature also alerts you to Events hosted by Pages you Like, which could encourage more venues, performers, or production companies to officially host the events they throw. One day the feature might be able to show events where a band I Like was mentioned in the description. With third-party apps you enter your preferences or upload them via Facebook Connect, but then also have to remember to visit. Facebook’s new native event discovery feature makes finding fun things to do a seamless part of every day browsing. That means more outings, more moments, more memories. And you know where you can display the photos, checkins, and status updates about those memories? Timeline .