A topic focused search engine for fast feed discovery
One line pitch
A topic focused search engine for fast feed discovery
Team
John Park (founder) Chris (DB engineer) Kenny (Search engineer) Philip (Web engineer) Howard (Search engineer)
Pain
No satisfactory search engine out there for finding “information streams” such as news, blogs, microblogs, podcasts, and social media feeds
Solution
Feedmil improves the entire feed search process. In the search interface, feedmil allows users to specify not only the query but also the popularity range of feeds, enabling them to quickly discover high quality but less popular feeds located in the long tail of millions of feeds. On the search result page, feedmil gives a new feed search experience that is focused on quality and topic relevance beyond just popularity. With powerful slider controls for adjusting topic significance, users will be able to get more accurate results and at the same time explore the feeds they like serendipitously.
Technology
High speed feed crawling Resource conscious, real-time feed fetching Topic driven feed profiling Automatic feed quality assessment Feed ranking with machine learning Distributed processing of massive index data
Market
All types of feed consumers (end users as well as businesses) – subscribers, aggregators, filters, remixers, converters, etc.
Business Model
Advertising (e-commerce feeds such as deals and new products, in particular) Partnering
Competition
For searching blogs and news feeds: Ask.com, Live.com, and Google Reader feed search No big competitors yet for the market of microblog feed and podcast search
Milestones
Japanese feeds: coming soon in summer, 2009 Chinese feeds: by the end of 2009 European language feeds: by the end of 2009
Conclusion
With feedmil.com, you will be able to find out real-time “information streams” of your current interest in the easiest & fastest possible way.
VentureDig’s Take:
My favorite part of FeedMil’s concept is their search style. Below the input field sits two metrics that you can adjust: “Surprising” and “Well Known.” This allows you to either find the up-and-coming blogs related to your search term, or the profoundly popular one.
I tested this out by searching for the term, “Venture Capital”
When I set it up towards the lower end of surprising, one of the first couple results that came up was my friend, Ryan Graves’ blog, “The Dream in Action.” His blog primarily centers on venture capital topics; however, it has a flair of venture capital topics. I’m not sure that it was entirely relevant; however, it was indeed surprising.
When I adjusted it closer to the middle, PE Hub’s venture capital feed came up, and when I moved it all the way to the “Well Known” end, Fred Wilson’s AVC blog picked up.
I feel these results are actually spot on and quite useful. I’m definitely a believer in FeedMil; although, I’ve yet to really dig deep into their competition. Obviously, Google Reader will be a tough one to take on; however, I never really use google readers search, except for items already in my feed.
Bottom Line: It’s all about execution right now for Feedmil. They’ve got to move swiftly and take advantage of the niche while it’s open.
What’s your take on FeedMill?
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Update on feedmil: After its first launch as a topical feed search engine in last April, feedmil.com is fully redesigned and enhanced to go real-time.
It is now a real-time search engine for a variety of live streams from blogs, microblogs, podcasts, as well as public and social media.
Please come and enjoy!