Interview With New York Startup Spark Rebel

Social discovery is one of the hottest online and mobile crazes right now. There are social discovery sites for everything from restaurants, events, people, things, food and fashion. Spark Rebel is an amazing blend of social and discovery revolving around fashion that real women are wearing today. Sure it’s nice to be able to shop the top tier boutiques in Chelsea, Manhattan and Rodeo drive and Spark Rebel does have feature some high fashion, but the thick of this social discovery site for fashion is what everyday women are working to work, out on the town or for a relaxing evening.

As people’s lives got busier and busier and they began to take to online shopping over in store shopping, an entirely new way to discover things popped up. The problem with traditional online shopping sites is that you’re seeing what the stores want you to see. You’re seeing the fashions that the buyers are seeing and not necessarily what everyone’s wearing.

Then, you go about your busy day and see that awesome outfit a woman is wearing at Starbucks or you see a must have dress on a woman in the elevator with you, and then you never see it again.

Spark Rebel uses a mixture of social, discovery and recommendation to bring the hottest trends and fashions to their users.

Spark Rebel was born out of site for teenage girls, which is a segment even harder to curate than traditional women’s wear.  We got a chance to interview Spark Rebel. Check out that interview after the break

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Baltimore Startup: Woofound Launches Gamified Recommendation App For iOS

Woofound is a Baltimore based startup in the recommendation space. Since we hail from Baltimore and Philly, this is exciting news for our area, and of course “everywhere else”.

Woofound matches your personality to things you want to do. Woofound was actually built in conjunction with psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Dr. Noreen Honeycutt from Baltimore Maryland. This is actually the second startup in just as many days that we’ve reported on that dives much deeper than the surface to serve up recommendations or discoveries. The first was London based ColourDNA which uses the psychology of colours in it’s discovery platform.

Our friend Sarah Pereze over at TechCrunch reports that Woofound co-founders Dan Sines and Josh Spears founded the company last year after Spears was set up on a blind date. The two friends thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to match up interests based on personality traits?

Like Parking Panda, (another Baltimore startup) Woofound’s launch centers around Baltimore and DC, however today’s launch brings online the 70 top metro markets. Perez pointed out that most of the recommendations in her hometown of Tampa were things she was already familiar with. I had much better luck in Atlanta this early morning.

There’s not much mention of how deep the personality integration goes however they are going to develop a version of Woofound for the Univesity of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) that will help students with career path goals.

The interface is nice and it has this simple feel to it. The user simply rates things “Me or Not Me” reminiscent of the hot or not days.

The iOS version launched today with Android in the coming months.

Linkage:

Check out Woofound here

Source: TechCrunch

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