Revver co-founder Ian Clarke launched a new startup about six months ago called Thoof. The website will deliver personalized news to you based upon a recommendation engine. As a user of Netflix and Amazon I’m really not big on their recommendation engines, as I think they are simplistic. If I order some romantic comedies on Netflix, it seems like they just recommend more romantic comedies usually with the same actors if possible. On Amazon if I order a business book on marketing, it just recommends other marketing books that are highly rated by others. All this is fine, but it seems to miss the threads of personal interests that seem logical to me, but random to others.

You can read the opinions of Michael Arrington at his post on TechCrunch. There is also a reply to some readers comments from Ian, so you might want to scroll down the page to read the debate. Michael has seen the beta and includes some screenshots. I don’t have an invite, but I’m working on it. (hint to anybody reading this)

Reports say that Austin Ventures has invested $1M in Thoof, but the company is not listed on the AV website as being part of the portfolio. So apparently this is a stealth investment at this point.

I’m happy to see an entrepreneur like Ian starting up a Web 2.0 company in Austin. I don’t know what the Austin connection is, or if he’s lived here for a while, but I’m glad to see this 5-person startup striking out and doing something different.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed under: News