Local Recommendations A...

Amid talks of a Groupon acquisition , the smart local recommendations app Alfred has arrived on Android . Alfred serves up personalized suggestions for nearby restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightclubs using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to develop personal “taste graphs” for its users. Previously an iOS-only app, the big news for Alfred’s second platform launch is not just the expanded reach, but also how the team at Clever Sense has approached the Android port. Instead of simply reproducing the familiar Alfred interface using different code, Clever Sense created a second native app specifically designed to take advantage of features and interactions found on the Android platform. On Android, Alfred looks totally different. Immediately after the app’s installation and launch, a screen asks you if you want to save the app to your homescreen. Having used Android for over a year myself, I’m surprised more Android apps don’t do this. (Android apps are hidden away by default in most cases, allowing users to customize multiple homescreens with their own selection of apps and widgets.) After launching Alfred, the app walks you through the “getting to know you” quiz which asks you to teach it about some of your preferences. You can opt out of the quiz, but that wouldn’t be a great idea. Alfred’s algorithms get better the more you train them, so it’s worthwhile to give the app’s smarts a kickstart via the quiz. When you arrive on Alfred’s main screen, this is where you’ll see the most startling departure from the iOS user interface. Instead of thumbnail photos you tap (e.g., lunch, dinner, etc.) to swipe through place recommendations, there are colored circles for “Ideas,” “Profile” and “Teach.” The Ideas circle, when tapped, take you through a list you scroll through up and down to choose the category. And when you’re in a category (e.g. “coffee and tea”), there’s a toolbar at the bottom that lets you view the recommendations as cards like on iOS, on a map or as a list. It allows you to apply filters to the recommendations. The end result is a bit more of a geeky take on Alfred, which, frankly, is perfect for the Android user base. Android users are often interested in things like tweaks, customizations, and heavy personalization, thanks to the platform’s openness. There’s an enjoyment of apps, in many cases, as tools that help you get the job done, instead of “experiences” like on iOS. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, but it’s different. To date, Alfred has served up 21 million recommendations to users, up from 7 million in October. And users have liked 4.6 million places, up from 2 million. But the company won’t disclose the actual user base numbers at this time. Clever Sense had previously said that restaurants and the like was just the first step for the use of Alfred’s technology. It was looking into delivering personalized deal recommendations from sites like Groupon and LivingSocial in its next phase. That would explain Groupon’s interest in the matter . But while that would be likely be a nice exit for the company, it would be a shame for Alfred’s happy users to lose this app, especially now that it came to Android. Alfred is live on the Android Market here .

Men Are More Engaged in...

Performics recently released its "Social Shopping Study: Participant Behaviors & Preferences on Social, Shopping and Deal Sites.: Contrary to popular belief, the study found that men more frequently take part in shopping activities via social networks, shopping sites and deal sites than women do. However...

Study: Online Denizens ...

A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that even with all of our Facebooks, Twitters, and Wi-Fi dongles, 25% of us “have no one to discuss important matters with.” What’s more, those lonely people prefer minority-endorsed products over majority-endorsed (Mr. Pibb v. Pepsi, Android v. iOS). The researchers Jing Wang, Rui Zhu, and Baba Shiv began their study, called “Social isolation: Are lonely consumers actually loners or conformers?,” in 2004 and asked self-described and quantitatively lonely and non-lonely people to assess their preferences for items that included popularity percentages. Folks who hang out online initially expressed preferences for the less popular items and then changed their story when they had to express their preferences in public. “Lonely people’s preference for the minority-endorsed products was only found when their preferences were kept private,” the authors write. “They switched to majority-endorsed products once their preferences became public.” Helpfully, the researchers note that most marketing may be ineffectual on older folks because, as many are lonely and alone, their actual preferences cannot be initially swayed by suggestions of popularity and “might be less likely to respond positively to rave reviews from a majority of customers.” In short, to paraphrase the old New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet everyone loves the underdog. In real life? In front of the family? The popular choice seems to be much more “rational” but in front of the keyboard we support the little guy. It’s also interesting to note that 25% percent of us Internerds are lonely, which I suspect may be a lowball figure. This may explain some forms of Internet trolling and fanboism, which makes this study even more important than it appears on the surface. In general, maybe we need to get out more? Guys? [Image: Yuri Arcurs / Shutterstock ]

Report: Google Remains ...

Universum , a company that specializes in employer branding, has published some findings based on the preferences of over 160,000 career seekers with a business or engineering background from the world´s 12 largest economies (based on nominal GDP). The goal: to find out which company is most attractive an employer according to business and engineering students. Well, there’s no way around it: Google is solidly numero uno in both categories – just like last year and the year before that ( see PDF ). Microsoft isn’t doing too bad either, while Apple is climbing up the charts fast. And Facebook is nowhere to be seen in the rankings (okay, neither are Twitter, Yahoo and – shocker – AOL). On the Business index, KPMG keeps its second place, with PwC overtaking Ernst & Young to end up in the top 3. Clearly, professional services firms still outrank major technology and FCMG companies (excluding Google, to be perfectly clear). Apple went from #18 to #9 in the Business index compared to last year, which is still remarkably low considering Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world. Microsoft, meanwhile, moved from #7 to #6 in the ranking. As for the Engineering index, which is also led by Google: IBM now finds itself in the second position, bumping Microsoft to the third spot. Both Intel and Apple rose up the charts (from #6 to #5 and #10 to #è, respectively, with Sony dropping from #6 to #4 in perceived employer attractiveness. (Image courtesy of Flickr user brionv )

Reddit Acquires Fan-Mad...

After spending far too much time with far too little support from their owners at Condé Nast, Reddit is on a bit of a roll lately. They’ve gone on a handful of hiring sprees this year , moved into a bigger, better office… and now, they’ve made their first acquisition: RedditGifts. For the non-Redditors out there (yeah, yeah, Narwhal bacons at Midnight and all that), RedditGifts is a user-to-user gift exchange service first launched by Redditor kickme444 for Reddit’s record-breaking Secret Santa back in 2009. In each “Secret Santa” event, Redditors are automatically matched with one other Redditor, and are then tasked with figuring out something awesome to send that person’s way. Some lurk through their recipient’s comments for clues as to what they might like; others just make something neat and hope it works out. There are, of course, horror stories of people scamming the process for free crap and other tomfoolery — but for the most part, everyone plays friendly and it works out well. Following the success of the first Secret Santa round (which pulled around 4,500 participants), RedditGifts followed up with a second in 2010, this time with over 17,000 gift-givers. Looking to keep the fun going outside of December, they also organized the totally secular and aptly named “Arbitrary Day”, which they describe as “a celebration of nothing in particular”. All gift exchanges combined, just shy of 43,000 people have participated, with around $1.5 million (plus a ton of man-hours, as so many of the gifts are handmade) spent on gifts. So, why the acquisition? What’s in it for Reddit? In short, RedditGifts’ two-person team just couldn’t afford to keep maintaining the project while also working their day jobs.. so now RedditGifts is their day job. Reddit gets to keep an awesome, well-established, largely-self-driven source of community bonding, and the RedditGifts team gets to do what they were doing before… but for money. Everyone wins! RedditGifts will continue to operate under the same two-person team (Dan “kickme444″ McComas and Jessica “5days” Moreno), remain on the same domain, and neither will be involved with the daily operations of Reddit proper. The only things expected to change: RedditGifts will eventually go opensource (Reddit already is), and the whole thing should lead to better integration (namely, easier sign-ups) in the longrun. No word yet if any money (beyond salaries, benefits and the like) actually traded hands for this acquisition, or if this is more of an acquisition-by-hire — either way, it’s not a bad deal for a project initially launched overnight on a whim. Crunchbase REDDIT Company: REDDIT Website: http://reddit.com/ Launch Date: 1/6/2005 Funding: $100k Launched in 2005, Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on your personal preferences and what the community likes. Your preferences are determined based on your... Learn more