recommendations
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Google Play Music gets more personalized with New Release Radio, customized to your tastes
It’s no longer enough to simply offer on-demand music as part of the value proposition for music streaming services – you have to enable discovery of new tunes and make recommendations, too. While it’s fair to say that Spotify is leading the market in terms of its influential playlist selections, rivals are quickly following suit – including Apple Music and Google… Read More
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Netflix tests pre-roll video ‘previews’ that are personalized to your interests
Netflix regularly experiments with new ways to introduce viewers to its own original programming, including through recommendations, trailers, and other featured selections on its homepage. The latest experiment, underway now, is the use of pre-roll advertisements that play before the show you’re about to watch. These are being used to promote Netflix series or movies that are live or… Read More
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Hulu launches user profiles on mobile
In December, Hulu announced the debut of user profiles in order to make its streaming TV service more personalized to end users, offering each user their own Watchlist, viewing history and recommendations based on their activity and interests. At the time of launch, the feature wasn’t broadly available, however. That’s now changing, as Hulu has just rolled out user profiles to… Read More
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Samsung rolls out new smart TV services for sports, music & video, plus an updated mobile app
Apple last month released a new TV app in an attempt to centralize all the streaming TV options available across Apple TV, iPhone and iPad. Now, Samsung is rolling out its own take on the matter, with the launch of a trio of new Smart TV services focused on sports, music and video on demand. The services are a part of Samsung’s Smart Hub platform, which offers customers a way to… Read More
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Hulu acquires The Video Genome Project to improve recommendations ahead of live TV service’s launch
Amid a growing number of video streaming services, Hulu today has finalized an acquisition that will allow it to better compete on user experience, by way of improved recommendations. The company has bought the assets The Video Genome Project (The VGP), which maintains one of the largest, structured databases of video content. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Hulu says only a small… Read More
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Apple recommends products based on your purchase history in its Apple Store app
Apple has big plans to overhaul its App Store in the months ahead to better tailor the experience to its end users. But ahead of that, the company has introduced a more personalized version of its Apple Store app – yes, the one you use to buy things. According to the company, the app will now recommend new products based on its understanding of the devices you already own. For example… Read More
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Yahoo Radar is a mobile travel guide with a chatbot-like assistant
Yahoo this morning launched a new travel guide for iOS it’s calling Yahoo Radar. While the app will offer traditional travel companion type features like restaurant recommendations and details on popular attractions, landmarks, and other sights in a given city, the app will be more useful to those who use Yahoo Mail as their primary email client. It also heavily relies on a… Read More
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Legit Debuts A Social Watchlist App For Finding The Best Movies And Shows On Any Service
With the number of cord cutters on the rise, and even pay TV subscribers spending more of their time streaming video from services like Netflix and Amazon, there’s a growing need for tools that make the experience of finding new and quality content to watch better and easier. That’s especially true since there’s no universal “TV guide” that spans across… Read More
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Kifi Debuts A “Deep” Search Engine For Twitter Based On Your Own Tweets
A startup called Kifi is rolling out a new tool that allows you to automatically save all the links you tweet in order to create a personalized search engine that includes those links as well as others it recommends based on what you’ve already shared. Called “Kifi for Twitter,” the company describes the new feature as something of a deep search engine for Twitter because… Read More
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Yandex Buys Sovetnik To Expand Its E-Commerce Business With Better Recommendations
Another acquisition for Yandex, this one to help the online search giant — known as the Google of Russia — build out its Yandex.Market shopping portal. It has bought Sovetnik, a Russian startup that has developed an e-commerce browser extension of the same name. Sovetnik (which means ‘advisor’ in Russian) currently has 2 million users. It tracks products that… Read More
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WalmartLabs Acquires Kleiner Perkins-Backed Luvocracy, A Pinterest-Like Marketplace For Product Recommendations
Walmart’s Silicon Valley R&D group @WalmartLabs is announcing this morning that it has acquired its 14th startup, social marketplace Luvocracy. As part of the deal, @WalmartLabs will bring in a total of 16 employees from Luvocracy, including founder and CEO Nathan Stoll. Luvocracy offered a Pinterest-like experience where friends and tastemakers can recommend products for others. Read More
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Apple Acquires Spotsetter, A Social Search Engine For Places
Spotsetter, a social search engine using big data to offer personalized recommendations as to places to go, has been quietly snapped up by Apple, TechCrunch has learned. The technology, which involves layering social data on top of a maps interface could be used to beef up Apple Maps with features competitor Google lacks. The deal, we understand, was mainly about acquiring the technology and… Read More
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GemShare Brings Simple, Word-Of-Mouth Recommendations To The iPhone
A company called GemShare wants to formalize what’s today a somewhat haphazard and frustrating process of getting personal recommendations from friends, with the introduction of a new iPhone app that lets you quickly ask for the best local recommendations for everything from mechanics to doctors to dry cleaners and more. The company has raised $1.2 million in seed funding… Read More
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With $1.5M In Angel Funding, byUs.com Wants To Provide Better Recommendations For Important Service Providers
There are tons of recommendation sites out there, but for services where the stakes are much higher than a meal–like pediatricians or financial advisors–a lot of people still prefer referrals from friends. But that’s a challenge if you are, for example, new to an area. New site byUs.com wants to mimic the way word-of-mouth referrals work by providing an invite-only… Read More
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Zofari Debuts A “Pandora For Places” On iPhone & Android
Some local recommendation apps tell you where you can go to eat, dine or be entertained, as rated by things like proximity, price or user reviews. Others aim to offer a more personalized experience, helping you find places you would actually want to visit, based on your own personal interests. Zofari, a new company trying to build what’s best described as “a Pandora for… Read More
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Social Travel App Jetpac Ditches Facebook, Pivots To Instagram-Based “City Guides” For At-A-Glance Recommendations
Facebook-based social travel apps may have run their course. Jetpac, a gorgeous but ultimately slow-to-grow travel app for iPad, which last year raised $2.4 million in Series A funding, is shifting its focus today with the launch of its new Jetpac City Guides for iPhone. These visual guides cover millions of venues in 5,000 cities worldwide, but in a different way than you might expect… Read More
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Restaurant Recommendation Engine Ness Now Helps Groups Decide Where To Eat, Adds Support For Web & Android Users Too
Restaurant recommendations service Ness has been steadily improving upon on its technology which helps you find the best place to eat based on your unique likes and dislikes, a place’s popularity, time of day and other factors. Earlier this year, it rolled out an update which allowed for instant recommendations, and today it’s launching recommendations for groups – that… Read More
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Vowch, Because Some Recommendations Think Outside The Box
Countless apps have tried to nail down the recommendations space, with not one rising to dominance. Today, another launches out of public beta to try and win the space that’s been so highly sought after. The app is called Vowch, and the main idea is that users can search anything they like, without any limitations. For example, if you want to like Rachel Berry on Glee, but you’re… Read More
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Discovr Delivers Total iOS 7 Overhaul For Its Music Discovery App With Streaming And Social Features
Discovr is one of those apps that has managed considerable success on the basis of doing one thing very well, in a number of different ways. The Australian startup behind the Discovr apps, Filter Squad, was founded in 2011 and since they’ve had strong numbers across four apps, including Discovr Apps, Discovr People, Discovr Movies, and its first, Discovr Music. That last one gets a… Read More
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