Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, both ex-Googlers, today announced the launch of their startup, Likaholix, which lets you curate things you like on the web. You sign up, create a profile and bookmark your likes — books, movies, things, places, hotels and anything you fancy. Sounds simple enough, right? But since these are both Googlers, they are using search under the hood to make relevant recommendations based on the people, topics and items you like.
What I find interesting is that another startup that centers on personalized web has been started by former Googlers. FriendFeed is another that comes to mind. With digital content exploding on the web, sooner or later Google’s approach to content is going to have problems. This concept of “liking,” or effortless recommendation, is one way of dealing with data deluge. It is part of the ambient intimacy trend I have written about in the past.
Likaholix, as it stands, is a good solid start. It’s easy and intuitive to use, though I think it will be growth challenged. It also needs to figure out a way to merge its service with blogs and Facebook; it isn’t viral enough. If it can overcome some of the early challenges and build a large enough user base, it has the potential to be a big business, through highly personalized ads alongside recommendations.
If you want to check it out, head on over to the web site and sign up using code “likegigaom.” (here’s a link to sign up) There are 200 invites if you want to grab one.
Agreed, I think they have a solid start, but they are still missing something. Added integration with other services is probably it. If I “like” a TV show on Likaholix, I want the latest episode of it from Hulu to be embedded with my like for example. I know they are just getting started but if they can integrate it well, I will be an active user.
Hey SiliconAngel,
There are a total of 3K beta invites that we are giving away today. Giga Om has 200 and so do a couple of other blogs. Once the beta invites run out we hope to than simply grow the beta version of the service through beta users inviting their friends.
Thanks
Bindu
Sounds similar to http://www.fanpop.com.
yawn – doesn’t sound particularly original – instead this sounds like another “some guys from google made it” story – is that really enough to merit coverage? there are FAR more interesting things going on….perhaps video ad tech, virtualization, zimbra blowing past gmail, kumo, yahoo shuffles, ad.com reorgs….must be something mo’ bettah…
this is not a company making product, this is just another “feature” company praying to appear on somebody else’s product roadmap – but my gut says that facebook or google could replicate this in about 8 hours, perhaps even during lunch with a solid team….
It does sound like some “ex google dudes make it big” story but hey it’s early days and we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, right?
Hey Dave,
Likaholix has a large entity database and semantic matching of entities to provide you with personalized recommendations and make liking of stuff really simple. I am not sure you can say that you could build a site like that in 8 hours. In fact, I wish it was that simple
I would prefer this experience within my present platforms like Facebook, MySpace or Orkut or my FireFox browser. Going for this service to another website is NO NO. 🙁
And I think Facebook already has it.
This is usual trap for most XGs try to beat their father at his game. 😉