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Loomia Powers Social Recommendations for WSJ, CNET, and NBC by Leveraging Facebook
Recommendations engine Loomia has signed deals with the Wall Street Journal, CNET, and NBC to provide users of those companies’ news websites with recommendations based on what their Facebook friends are reading.
Readers of these publications who are also Facebook users with Loomia’s SeenThis? application installed will see a list of recommended news articles like the one seen to the right. These recommendations are in addition to the ones typically made by the news sites, and they are derived completely from what your other SeenThis?-using friends on Facebook have been reading on the site. The so-called “social annotation line” below each headline gives users a sense of how the recommendation was generated.
Loomia co-founder and CTO David Marks says that there are several factors that go into determining whether a recommendation should be made. Of course, a user must actually visit an article before it can be considered for recommendation, but other factors such as link clicks are also taken into consideration. If a user explicitly shares an item on Facebook through Loomia, the behavior will show the strongest preference for an item. As for how the system decides which of your friends’ articles are most appropriate to show you, SeenThis? considers which Facebook groups and networks you are part of, in addition to which articles you have read personally.
Sound a lot like Facebook’s own Beacon? Well that’s because it is…but it also isn’t. With Loomia, all of the data is anonymized so there is no fear of revealing your reading habits to others. Loomia’s SeenThis? system also inverts the Beacon concept by providing social recommendations outside of Facebook and on partner sites themselves, in addition to the other way around (the SeenThis? application within Facebook will let you see what your friends have been reading across Loomia’s partner sites). Finally, SeenThis? differs by focusing on news article recommendations and not purchases from places like Amazon. Don’t expect to see a scarf recommendation from Loomia while browsing Amazon anytime soon.
When pressed on whether he’s concerned that Facebook could extend Beacon’s capabilities to include off-site recommendations, Marks responded by saying that content partners actually have an incentive to work with a third party company like Loomia when integrating social recommendation features. If they were to partner with Facebook directly, they would then have to partner will every other social network individually as well. With Loomia, they need to establish only one business relationship and the SeenThis? application will then aggregate information from across all participating social networks.
Oh yea, and about that WSJ subscription wall - Facebook users will be able to read any WSJ articles recommended to them for free.
Update: Marks wanted to add to the distinctions between SeenThis? and Beacon by emphasizing that SeenThis? is not an advertisement network like Beacon. Whereas with Beacon advertisers essentially pay Facebook for the opportunity to participate in the on-site “recommendations” by Facebook users, no one is paying Loomia to advertise on Facebook. He also emphasizes that 95% of SeenThis?’s usage takes place outside of Facebook, even though the application within Facebook serves as a destination for recommendations.
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Loomia Partners With Wall Street Journal
Loomia, a recommendation engine that is used by ecommerce and content websites to suggest new stuff to users, locked up a marquee business development deal with the Wall Street Journal.
The module, which appears next to stories, suggests other Wall Street Journal content based on what the user has read previously on the site, and compared to what other users have read, too. The module is titled “People Who Read This…” - see image below.
Loomia competes directly with Aggregate Knowledge, a high flying startup that has raised a total of $25 million in venture capital.
Like Aggregate Knowledge, Loomia offers its core recommendation engine to both content providers and ecommerce sites. Their pricing differs based on the type of partner - they charge a CPM for content sites and a percentage of sales that can be tracked to referrals for ecommerce sites. Pricing is here. They also have a free product for blogs and other smaller sites.
Ultimately, what Aggregate Knowledge and Loomia are offering are merchandising tools to Internet companies. Sites like Amazon can afford to develop their own solutions in-house, but other sites, battling razor thin margins already, need to outsource this. Companies like Loomia and Aggregate Knowedge are there to fill that need. BazaarVoice is another company in this sector, although they offer a different product - reviews and commenting features.
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