Snapsort, until today known a popular camera recommendation site, has raised $500K from undisclosed investors to expand its algorithmic product recommendation technology to other verticals, starting with cars at Carsort.com and phones at Geekaphone.com.
Snapsort co-founder Christopher Reid compares Snapsort’s technology to Factual and Metaweb, but tells me that its data is much cleaner than the former and richer than the later. Snapsort.com, previously in stealth mode, has over 5 million monthly pageviews, with an average site time of 4 minutes and an average conversion rate of 10% for US visitors according to Reid. It took Reid and the three people on his team a year to build.
Snapsort, Carsort and Geekaphone scrape data daily from sources including retailers, manufacturers and aggregate reviews. On a Snapsort site user can discover products based on drill down criteria like price, model and make through a user-friendly interface.
“We’re more like the friendly knowledgable geek you trust for all your gadget advice, less like the list of products on the Best Buy website that you can’t freaking differentiate,” Reid explains, referring to Snapsort’s human friendly ambitions.
The company plans on being in 20 verticals by the end of the year and has its sights set on dominating product recommendation for electronics, entertainment, travel and parenting. “We want to provide advice on everything,” Reid says.
