Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Findory, originally added to eHub on Oct 02, 05.

eHub Interviews Findory

Thanks to Greg Linden of Findory for this email interview posted October 17, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Findory: Findory is a personalized news site that learns from the news you read, searches thousands of feeds worldwide, and builds you a personalized front page. It’s easy to use. Just read articles! Findory learns from the articles you read and helps you find other interesting articles. We also have early products in personalized web search and personalized advertising.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Findory: We think people are overwhelmed by the flood of information in their daily lives. We need a way to filter, prioritize, and find focus. Personalization can help people find and discover the information they need.

Personalization of information is inevitable. We just want to make it happen sooner.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

Findory: Full-time.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Findory: Two people, Greg Linden and Alex Edelman. Greg wrote the first recommendation engine used by Amazon.com, and later led the software team that developed Amazon.com’s personalization systems. Alex is also an alumnus of Amazon.com. During his 7 years at Amazon.com, he worked on everything from the website display engine to developer tools to supply chain and logistics systems.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Findory: Keep it simple. Launch early and often, always learning, always improving.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Findory: We’re using open source products. Linux, Apache, Perl, MySQL, BerkeleyDB. Our personalization technology is home grown.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

Findory: A common request from power users was that we add an RSS reader and allow people to import OPML. A week ago, we launched a feed reader that is integrated into our personalized news site. It is available at http://findory.com/s/

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Findory: Users are distributed worldwide. We’ve been surprised by the international usage, especially the traffic from Europe.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

Findory: We would like to expand into languages other than English. We would like to expand our personalized web search and personalized advertising. We would like to become our own ad broker and allow weblogs and other sites to use our personalized advertising engine.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Findory: Get big fast. Our goals are ambitious. While we remain alone in personalized news for now, all the search giants are talking about personalized information. We need to move quickly, keep nimble, and grow rapidly.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Findory: At the moment, lack of capital is our biggest constraint. We are still self-funded and, while we like the independence we have, it is hampering our ability to hire and grow.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Findory: Fine-grained targeted, personalized advertising. Our advertising engine targets not only based on the content of the page, but also based on the reader’s history of interaction with Findory. We believe we can make advertising relevant and useful by targeting advertisements only to people who will be interested. Our goal is to get to the point where the advertisements are so interesting that people stop ignoring them and start viewing them as valuable content.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Findory: We get over 2M page views/month and have been growing rapidly.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Findory: While MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, and Google talk a lot about personalization, we are building it. Everything we have built, we built with just two passionate and dedicated people. Not only does Findory work and work well, but also it is built to perform at large scale. We are very proud of what we have built at Findory.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Findory: These are the early days, full of experimentation. We’re all trying to learn what works and what doesn’t, testing, learning, building new things It’s an exciting time.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Findory: Google, Bloglines, Amazon.com, My Yahoo, many news sites and weblogs (often through articles recommended by Findory).

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Findory: Sadly, not enough.

Thanks to Greg Linden of Findory for this email interview posted October 17, 2005.

Visit Findory
Originally added to eHub on Oct 02, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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