February 1st, 2013

Gravity Fully Launches Its Content Personalization Tools, Making Them Available To Any Publisher

Gravity logo

A little more than three years after the company was first announced, personalization startup Gravity is doing a big launch today, opening up its suite of APIs so that they’re available to any publisher who wants to use them.

Founded by a trio of former Myspace executives, Gravity has created an “interest graph” mapping different topics, which it then uses to recommend different content to… → Read More

October 2nd, 2012

Gravity Raises $10.6M For Content Personalization And Marketing, Round Led by GRP Partners

Gravity logo

Gravity, the content personalization startup founded by a team of former Myspace executives, just announced that it has raised $10.6 million in Series B funding.

When Gravity launched in 2009, it offered some content recommendation products for consumers, but its real goal was to convince publishers to use its “interest graph” technology to deliver a personalized experience for visitors — in… → Read More

March 3rd, 2011

The Age Of Relevance

What’s the Next Big Thing after social networking?

This has been a favorite topic of much speculation among tech enthusiasts for many years. I think we are already witnessing a paradigm shift – a move away from simple social sharing towards personalized, relevant content.

The key element of the next big thing is the increasing significance of the Interest Graph to complement the Social… → Read More

November 16th, 2010

Twinterest: Gravity Analyzes Your Twitter Stream Tells You What You Love

A few weeks ago we hinted at some of the personalization tools that Los Angeles based startup Gravity would be unveiling. Today they’re launching Twinterest – a tool that creates an interest graph – a list of things you probably love – based only on looking at your twitter stream.

Gravity CEO Amit Kapur explained the product in detail in a guest post on TechCrunch today.

To use it go to… → Read More

November 16th, 2010

The Future Will Be Personalized

Today, we live in a world where we’re constantly overwhelmed by information. There are over 90M tweets per day, 34 hours of YouTube video uploaded every minute, and every Facebook user has an average of 130 friends who are becoming more and more active all the time. We also experience this with content farms flooding search results and with the thousands of articles available everyday on… → Read More

October 13th, 2010

Gravity Regroups For Round Two: The Personalization War

Gravity, founded by ex-MySpace execs, first launched into private beta last December.

“At a high level Gravity is an evolution on forums,” I wrote when they launched. But the core of what makes Gravity special was the technology to track the Interest Graph: “Gravity has created a new way of thinking about and exploiting conversational data. They call the way they track and predict the→ Read More

March 29th, 2010

Former MySpace Exec Teams With Yahoo Rock Star For New Startup

MySpace’s former GM International Travis Katz left the company shortly after the big executive shakeout in the Spring of 2009.

He spent a few months in Hawaii recharging, and then moved his family to Silicon Valley. Since January he’s been working on a new startup, he says, and he’s teamed up with Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Boss.

That’s enough of a team to make things… → Read More

March 9th, 2010

More Talent Walks Out The Door At MySpace: Three Key Employees Go To Gravity

More bad news for an already bullet-riddled MySpace: three key employees have left the company to join Gravity, a cross-town startup founded by former MySpace COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto.

We covered Gravity’s launch in December 2009.

The three MySpacer’s are Chief Software Architect Chris Bissell (we previously reported Bissell’s resignation), Chief Systems Architect… → Read More

December 16th, 2009

Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta

Back in March 2009 a trio of MySpace execs -COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto – left to begin working on a new startup.

In May we learned that the company, then called Blue Rover Labs, had raised $10 million in funding. We also heard a few details about what the startup might be about: <em "The company is supposedly targeting the message board/Internet forum space… → Read More

June 4th, 2009

Ex-MySpace Execs Prepping To Unveil Blue Rover Labs, Now Hiring

Earlier this year three key MySpace executives jumped ship only two months before the company’s major reorg. Since then they’ve been pretty quiet — we’ve learned that they raised a $10 million funding round led by August Capital and Redpoint Ventures, but aside from that there hasn’t been much to go on. Now, more details are starting to emerge: we know that the company will be called Blue→ Read More

May 20th, 2009

Former MySpace Execs Get Funding For New Venture; Some Details Leak

Remember when MySpace lost three key execs before the whole chaotic reorganization? They announced their departure in March. And we’ve now confirmed that they are closing a substantial round of funding, even before they’ve picked a final name for the company.

The company, whatever it will be called, was founded by Amit Kapur (MySpace COO), Steve Pearman (MySpace SVP Product Strategy) and Jim→ Read More

March 3rd, 2009

Three MySpace Execs Departing To Start New Company (Leaked Memo)

This just breaking: Three executives at MySpace are leaving the company to form their own startup, led by COO Amit Kapur (pictured here). He will be joined by senior VP of technology Jim Benedetto and and senior VP of product strategy Steve Pearman. They have internally announced their departures, we have been able to confirm with the company.

MySpace is well into its monetization phase, and is… → Read More

November 17th, 2008

Samsung Gravity hits T-Mobile today

T-Mobile said the Samsung Gravity would show up on Nov. 17th and, sure enough, it has arrived. While the Gravity might not have the same pull as some of the bigger, less wallet-friendly QWERTY handsets on the market, at $49.99 (on a 2-year contract) it’s a decent pick for anyone looking to wear down their thumbs without wearing down their savings. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> → Read More

April 2nd, 2008

Baby got backless bra

It’s not every day that a tech blogger gets to write about women’s underwear, at least not on the tech blog, but here I am, and it’s no longer April Fool’s. What advancement in Bra-tech has such significance to warrant a post on this blog, you ask? Why the backless bra, of course! Looking like a pair of slings joined in the middle, the backless bra is just that. It’s… → Read More

February 20th, 2008

Concept lamp runs on gravity

[photopress:gravia_w_person_cutout_bw_400.jpg,full,center] You can take your solar power and scrub it. Solar power is great if you live in, I dunno, daylightistan (aka Los Angeles), but for those of us up here in the Northwest, it’s not practical. But we have gravity, and this lovely gravity-powered lamp will work just fine. Invented by student Clay Moulton, the lamp is primed, then slowly… → Read More

February 4th, 2008

Know what this place needs? Definitely a floating chair powered by magnets

I’ll be saving up for the office chair version whenever it comes out but for those of you looking to really kick back after a long day of widget transconfiguration (or whatever it is you do), here’s the “The Lounger” by British company Hoverit Ltd. Defying gravity with the use of repelling magnetic forces in both the bed and base this contemporary lounger is comfortable… → Read More