Newzmate, a Kiev, Ukraine-based startup that develops semantic data analysis, aggregation and recommendation services, has launched its latest product. “Traqli” is a button (and service) that publishers can install to enable readers to keep track of news stories and story updates. It’s one-part news “follow” button, and one-part recommendation engine since, using its own semantic analysis and algorithms, related stories are sent to readers in a Traqli email digest.
Once a publisher has aded the Traqli widget to its site, readers can choose to track any article by clicking on the “traq” button. Traqli then automatically consolidates related news and sends it to a user by old-fashioned email — although an app for mobiles and tablets seems like an obvious next step.
For publishers, Traqli is designed to foster closer relationships between a publication’s brand and their audience by encouraging readers to stay longer and return more often.
In addition — and this points to a potential revenue model — Traqli can be used as a targeted marketing tool, whereby advertisers and marketers can take advantage of the segmentation provided by the Traqli widget and technology, which sorts visitors by their interests. In other words, by targeting the interest-graph that Newzmate aims to build.
On the personalisation and content recommendation side, competitors include Outbrain, Taboola, and Gravity, but these tend to focus on engagement when the reader is already visiting a content site. Visitors coming from Traqli recommendations mean that publications/blogs are getting readers who have demonstrated interest in a story, and are not necessarily a current or even recent reader.
Newzmate is backed by the Ukranian incubator Happy Farm.