Miomi, a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) I talked about back in October, is officially unveiling itself to the world now. Incorporating content from Encarta and Wikipedia, you can plot your own historical progress through time by uploading your personal take on events be it through words, pictures or video. You can choose to share this the world or just with your friends on the site. So far they’ve had over 120,000 sign-ups.
The brainchild of three German post-graduate students, Thomas Whitfield (25) of Oxford University, Charly Toni (26) and Richard Schreiber (26) from the Technical University of Munich, the startup secured funding from Brightstation Ventures and is part of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme, presumably because they are a showcase for MS tech. It’s been a fast track. They pitched the idea to the Oxford University “Idea Idol” competition in February this year, got the backing, moved to London, recruited Jonny Crowe as CEO and launched the beta in October.
DLA’s like Miomi essentially work on a business model of hooking in users, and by the time they’ve realised they’ve uploaded a lifetime’s worth of content it’s way too late to pull out. Smart.
However, Miomi’s policy on data retention will need to take into account whatever happens to Facebook, following the Information Commissioner’s investigation into the social network for retaining user data after they have requested it be deleted.
Microsoft is calling it “the UK’s answer to Skype and YouTube” which seems somewhat far-fetched.