UK Startup Swogo Launches The “Best Way To Find Products” Starting With Laptops

Swogo,UK Startup,startup,startups,international startup, recommendation engineAccording to various consumer electronic trade publications the average consumer takes three weeks to make a decision on a laptop.  A new UK startup called Swogo is looking to take that decision making time down to seconds.

Swogo says the main hurdle in making a purchasing decision is the way people search for items. Either they have an idea in their mind at what they want to purchase and then go to a consumer electronics retailer for comparison shopping.

Other consumers take to gigantic search engines like Google and Bing. The problem with traditional search engines is that they lead to information and not answers. Sifting through that information and then vetting it against paid ad campaigns can often lead consumers down the wrong path. In this case they either make the wrong purchasing decision or they prolong the decision making process further.

Swogo plans on becoming a recommendation connection engine for many types of products but they are starting with laptops. The site launched on Monday afternoon in the UK with laptops only and plans on expanding their product line and their global reach this year.  By the end of 2013 they plan on adding tablets, smartphones, cameras and TVs.

Sure there are plenty of other electronic and gadget sites out there but Swogo says they have an algorithm that aides customers in making their important purchasing decisions,reducing the time down to seconds.

Check out these links:

Swogo is on the web here

More startup news can be found here

This is the biggest startup conference in the US

California Startup: Recmnd.Me The People Recommendation Site, Interview

Recommendation startups are hot right now. It seems that every time you turn around there is another startup or app recommending something or other. Now Jesse Gant, who has a lengthy resume in some big startups like Ancestry.com, has invented the people recommendation startup.

Now we all know that LinkedIn offers referrals and references, but those are all from your top tier contacts. I couldn’t tell you how many  times a friend of mine, or even a nodding acquaintance has asked me to write a referral or reference for them on LinkedIn. A few I’ve done, others I’ve passed on.  Most hiring people and recruiters know the value of a LinkedIn referral, which is about as valuable as your LinkedIn password was yesterday.

Recmnd.Me allows you to post a profile for yourself and once you’ve signed up people can decide on their own with just a click if they’re going to recommend you or not. Gant told TechCrunch that he had seven references on LinkedIn throughout his entire career, but on recmnd.me he already had 21.

The other piece for Recmnd.Me is that if you’re looking to fill a position or need, and you search, say, “software developer” Recmnd.Me is going to rank the software developers in the network for you to see and  choose.

Through one of our great friends in Utah we were introduced to Gant who took the time to do an interview with us. The interview is after the break.

Read More…

Israeli Startup: Jinni Is Powering Big National Sites With Pandora Like Movie Engine

You may not have heard of Yosi Glick, the founder of Israeli startup Jinni, but one things for sure you will probably agree with his fundamental principles behind video discovery.

Glick talks in this story with Bloombgerg’s Cliff Edwards about how most video (movie)  discovery/recommendation sites have things all wrong.  Edwards uses the example of the movie The Usual Suspects. When you watch The Usual Suspects on most video platforms it’s going to recommend Se7en. While both could be characterized as crime thrillers, the audience for Usual Suspects is hardly the audience for Se7en.

Glick’s startup Jinni has put a lot more into discovery when it comes to movies. They provide in-depth algorithms and matching, making it more like a Pandora for movies. Jinni has created an “entertainment genome” that weighs thousands of different parameters to serve up like minded suggestions for movie viewers.

In addition to offering a much more thorough recommendation engine for movie viewers, LG Electronics invested $5 million into Jinni for voice recognition software. The voice recognition software taps into the platform where a user could say “I want to watch a Harrison Ford action movie” and it would serve up Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

LG and Jinni are mum on whether the technology has gone into this next round of smart tvs that the Korean manufacturer is putting out.

They must be doing something right because some of the top companies in the world have employed Jinni’s technology. Best Buy’s movie rental site uses Jinni and Microsoft entered into a deal last September to incorporate Jinni’s software into the Xbox 360 service.

Linkage:

Put Jinni to your own test here at their website

Source: Bloomberg

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”