Welcome to the Evri party, Y! & Google
Ever since Evri was founded, we’ve worked to solve a fundamental problem: helping people get the content they want by filtering out the noise.
And there’s so much noise out there. If you get your news from a “source” (like a publication or a feed), you get whatever that source feels like telling you. If you get your news on a social feed, you may get news that interests you, but (a) only when your friends talk about it and (b) on a schedule affected either by the algorithm that drives that feed or when or how you tune in to your social networks.
That’s why, at Evri, we focus on our promise to deliver the best, fastest news to our users based on the topics (not just the sources or the feeds) that interested them. Not only do we distill the most relevant, interesting content into intelligent, highly targeted streams – we also enable people to follow the topics that they are most passionate about, distilled from literally thousands of leading sources on the Web. That’s been our mission since early 2009, and we’ve shaped our vision around it, delivering the Evri goods from Evri.com and on iPhone and Android mobile apps that deliver the topical content that people wanted most, quickly and effectively, wherever they were.
My knowledge of Evri’s history and capabilities made today a very interesting day for me. Here’s why: I’ve just witnessed two fascinating developments that validate the Evri vision, our progress over the past 18 months, and why our way of doing things is suddenly even more relevant than ever.
Recently, Google added a “follow” button to Google News, enabling users to follow stories – not just sources – very much like with the “Follow” button and functionality that we launched in early 2010. What’s more, Yahoo! Announced that they are building a mobile content personalization platform – a foundation for mobile content apps – which, interestingly enough, will allow publishers to leverage their content engine for their own development (on the surface, sounds a lot like the Evri mobile personalized content platform that has already enabled for Hearst Corp. and others to build highly functional mobile apps.)
Google and Y! – now stepping in to the space that we’ve created. I could imagine scenarios where this might cause concern.
But I’ve had a very different experience today. First, I see this as a fantastic validation of the value of what we’re already delivering, and a large-scale industry comment on how much people want this capability.
And that’s where the fun begins. This is really hard stuff to do well – and I’m looking forward to seeing how the big guys do it, because we’ll get to show how we do it better. See, filtering signal from noise, distilling topical content, and enabling users to follow and personalize their news experience – over the air on mobile no less – is no insignificant problem to solve.
Our scientists and engineers have invested literally hundreds of person years in refining our back end Natural Language Processing system, Semantic Search and Discovery Platform, massive structured Entity Data store, and Mobile Content Delivery APIs to create a scalable, state of the art solution for consumers. It’s our core competency, our IP, and our stock in trade. We watch it work like nothing else out there can. As these big players roll out their follow buttons and strategic plans, we’re already delivering on the “personalized” promise better than anything else that’s out there. And our plans take us out to the next generation of access and personalization, even as they roll out their first gen.
As the market turns toward these announcements, we can confidently say that what they promise tomorrow, we deliver today – and what we deliver tomorrow? Well, let’s just say that we have some cool announcements of our own to share soon.
Perhaps we, Evri, are that “flap of a butterfly wing” that’s the beginning of a hurricane. With the market suddenly looking differently at the space that we’ve defined, we welcome the innovation to come. We’ll all accelerate and raise the standards, giving people the content discovery and personalized news experience they deserve – and are demanding. Welcome to the show, newcomers and big dreamers. Evri is ready… and we will continue to show you how it’s done.
