PND Technology: Parse.ly

Frequent readers will recall that I occasionally report on my attendance at the New York Tech meet-up which is a once a month showcase of new and interesting technology and applications in early development (mostly). I also recently attended a similar group meeting in Hoboken and I am considering reporting on what I find interesting at these meetings on a more regular basis. So here goes.

I am interested in curated content and Parse.ly is a product that helps content owners curate content for their users. At a recent meeting I attended one of the founders of the company took the audience through their product showing how users on traditional media sites are treated like strangers even though they may be frequent visitors to the website. The parse.ly product "connects users with content they’ll love through personalized recommendations. Our technology gives publishers the power to quickly and easily recommend relevant content to users based on what they’ve read in the past and what other, similar users are reading now." It is a cool and elegant application.

By understanding what the user has looked at and interacted with over time and what other users with similar habits have also viewed the parse.ly tool is able to serve up a more concentrated and particular set of content that the user will find interesting. Perhaps a good example of how this process works and how it could be implemented is represented in a current test the company is running with a major newspaper. Parse.ly has suggested that pre-packaged topic-based email subscriptions are too generic and that the Parse.ly tool can craft topic collections based expressly on the needs/interests of a particular individual. So do away with the generic email subscriptions and implement a parse.ly solution that is more relevant to the user.

Parse.ly is available in various forms with the most powerful being full integration with a clients' content. The company is working with some major media clients on enterprise level contracts but is also available to general users so check it out.