Available in | English |
---|---|
Owner | Alphabet Inc. |
Commercial | yes |
Launched | Late 2008 |
Current status | Active (Integrated in Google) |
Wavii was a Seattle startup founded by Adrian Aoun in 2008, and was subsequently acquired by Google, Inc. in April 2013. [1] Wavii developed an iPhone app that allowed users to follow topics (e.g., a company, celebrity, politician, athlete, city, etc.) and receive short updates about them in their feed. This app was based on data produced by Wavii's proprietary technology, which used natural-language-processing and machine-learning approaches to convert content on the web (e.g., news articles and blogs) into structured summaries of the stories they contained. [2]
Wavii's team was primarily former Last.fm, Microsoft, and Amazon engineers. [3]
On April 30, 2013 it was announced that Google, Inc. had acquired Wavii for an amount that was officially undisclosed, but which industry insiders claimed was over $30 million USD. The acquisition was viewed as a way for Google to expand their ability to understand the web for search and to summarize content. [4]
Google discontinued the Wavii iPhone app and website, but the company reported that it is continuing to run Wavii's technology and produce feed content for applications within Google. [5]
Following the acquisition Wavii's team relocated from Seattle to the San Francisco Bay area. [6]
StumbleUpon was a browser extension, toolbar, and mobile app with a "Stumble!" button that, when pushed, opened a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interests, similar to a random web search engine. Users were able to filter results by type of content and were able to discuss such webpages via virtual communities and were able to rate such webpages via like buttons. StumbleUpon was shut down in June 2018.
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Prismatic was a social news curation and discovery application for various Web browsers and mobile devices running iOS. It combined machine learning, user experience design, and interaction design to create a new way to discover, consume, and share media. Prismatic software used social network aggregation and machine learning algorithms to filter the content that aligns with the interests of a specific user. Prismatic integrated with Facebook, Twitter, and Pocket to gather information about user's interests and suggest the most relevant stories to read.
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