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Imagine a personal recommendations system -
for news, based not on consumption habits -
but on your gestures:
authoring and sharing.
In this tweet, New York University journalism professor, Jay Rosen, -
a prominent thinker in the area of online journalism and social media, -
endorses the idea behind 'Project Gestures', -
or 'Eleet' in Finnish -
and links to one of our earliest blog posts on the topic.
Wake up your connected device, and it will show you -
hyper-relevant web destinations, -
filtered for news that matches your interests.
This is the Holy Grail of what the Internet can enable.
Instead of comparing what people click and read, -
i.e. consuption behaviour, -
our engine looks at authoring behaviour.
Sharing a news article on Facebook or Twitter, -
leaving a comment or linking to it from a blog, -
are much stronger indications of relevance to the user -
than just clicking and reading.
In this way, we believe that 'Gestures' -
or 'Eleet', will be able to offer more relevant personalised news -
than other attempts at news recommendation.
When you point your browser to eleet.fi -
you can log on with your Facebook account.
If it's your first visit, -
you'll be asked to give eleet.fi -
permission to view the links that you've shared on Facebook.
Our algorithm then analyzes your shared links, -
Compares them with the links of other Eleet users, -
and calculates which other users in the system have shared links similar to yours.
Links that those reference users have shared, but you haven't, -
are then recommended to you.
In the recommended news view -
we offer you links to what we have identified as being news content, -
in order of relevance, based on collaborative filtering.
News comsumers are no longer loyal to their subscribed channels.
We all want to pick the most interesting stories, -
which ever media they appear in.
Over the next five years, in order to keep a competitive edge, -
Online news brands will therefore need to offer -
aggregated content from across the web.
Personal news recommendations, -
such as our gestures-engine enables, -
are an excellent value-add to existing news websites.
As journalism professor Dan Gillmor says: -
"If you send people away with valuable links, they tend to come back for more."
News organisations need this in order to retain users.
We can help them, -
by licensing our engine, -
and by helping them intergate and customize news recommendations to their own services.
So-called "freemium" revenue models -
will offer basic features for free, and advanced features for pay.
Websites can also charge micro-payments -
for time-limited access to personal recommendations.
Mobile applications, such as for the -
iPhone, Android, Symbian, Meego, or Windows Mobile, -
can be sold online.
And further we may consider offering services -
that can predict news demand -
and then optimize the placement of online advertising.
After introducing Facebook authentication this summer, -
we have been actively inviting people to come and try eleet.fi.
Since then the number of people using our service -
has been picking up.
Facebook is our first implemented source of gestures informing our engine.
But that, of course, is just the beginning.
We intend to roll out similar integration -
with other major networks on the Social Web -
such as Twitter -
and also make it possible for people to submit -
any blog or RSS feed, as a source of their online gestures.
The more users, -
the more links,-
the more interesting recommendations we can offer.
Come join us at eleet.fi!