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Thoof Goes Poof!
This past weekend, Michael Arrington reported that Thoof, an Austin, Texas-based social news site, took a dirt nap. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to our readers. Stacey had the scoop way back in January that the company started by Ian Clarke (one of the founders of Revver) was up for sale.
Thoof wanted to create a Digg-like service by observing people’s click streams. The company raised some seed funding from Austin Ventures and others and hit its peak (in terms of traffic) in October 2007 before it began slip-sliding away into oblivion. Thoof’s web site now redirects to Reddit, one of the popular social news sites that’s owned by CondeNast.
Given that the company was up for sale for about six months, I would say it’s just the latest example of the fact that Web 2.0 remains a buyers’ market — not a good sign for tens of dozens of companies that have cropped up across the web. The buyers remain pretty disinterested — even Yahoo is still busy dealing with its own mess. Microsoft is too distracted to do anything, and while Google and AOL are buying stuff, both of them are being highly selective.
Another Personalized News Site Bites The Dust
When Thoof launched in July 2007 a lot of people gave it a good chance of success despite the fact that it was entering into the dreaded personalized news space. Sure, the market was littered with failed startups, but Thoof was founded by former Revver cofounder Ian Clarke, and was well backed by Austin Ventures, Ron Conway and others.
Thoof aimed to deliver tailored news by looking at what you click on, and nothing else (vote buttons and other tools weren’t a true indicator of intent, Clarke argued). From our first post on Thoof:
Thoof determines what you like based solely on what stories you click on to read. Asking for specific feedback, like voting or rating of stories, is too much to ask of users, Clarke says, noting that only a very small percentage of people who watched videos on Revver ever actually rated them. By analyzing what you tend to click on, Thoof will return results that it thinks you are more likely to click on than others. The result, over time, is a perfectly tailored news page for an individual.
The site peaked in October, but by January the wheels were coming off the car. We heard at that time that the company would continue to limp along and see what happened. But in the last couple of days the site has been redirected to Reddit, and Clarke officially moved on to another project in April.
We’ve asked Clarke and Austin Ventures for a comment, but it’s pretty clear Thoof is in the deadpool, joining competitors like Searchfox (deadpool, assets acquired by Yahoo), Findory (deadpool), Spotback (change in strategy) and Feeds 2.0 (no idea what their status is, site is live).
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Thoof Now in Public Beta
Social news site Thoof, privately launched nearly two weeks ago by invitation only, is now open to anyone. Our launch post is here.
Thoof is about personalized news and incorporates elements of Wikis, Digg/del.icio.us voting features. Users submit stories to the service as a link to the news item, along with a title, description and tags. Other users start to see the news item if Thoof determines they will like it. However, submissions can be easily be edited by other users who think there is something lacking.
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Revver Founder Launches Thoof: Personalized News Service
The web is littered with failed or stagnant personalized news startups. New startup Thoof is going to give it a whirl and see if they can do better than the ones that have tried it before.
The idea around personalized news: instead of showing stuff based on what an editor chooses (like this blog, or the Washington Post) or via some sort of community action (Digg, reddit), a user will see news items that the service thinks you will like, based on your past behavior compared to the community at large.
Services that we’ve covered that have entered this space in one way or another include Searchfox (deadpool, assets acquired by Yahoo), Findory (deadpool), Spotback (change in strategy) and Feeds 2.0 (no idea what their status is, site is live).
I have my own reasons for explaining why, so far, these sites haven’t succeeded. I think people usually want to read news and then discuss it with friends. So what is considered “interesting” is influenced by what everyone else is consuming that day. People flock to the big news sites because everyone else flocks there, too, and the niche audiences that really want personalized news aren’t enough to sustain these startups.
But others disagree, including Thoof founder Ian Clarke. Clarke, formerly a co-founder of video site Revver, thinks the sites that came before Thoof simply didn’t have a good solution, and users were left wanting.
Thoof is all about personalized news, and it learns over time what you want to read. But it’s also part wiki and it has Digg/del.icio.us-like attributes as well.
News is submitted by users in a Digg-like fashion. A link to a news item is submitted, along with a title, description and tags. Other users start to see the news item if Thoof determines they will like it. However, submissions can be easily be edited by other users who think there is something lacking. Any aspect of the news item can be changed, including the link, in a wiki-like fashion (see screen shot above and to left). Other users will see the change and be asked to vote on it. If enough users say yes, the changes stand. Otherwise, it reverts back to the previous submission.
Thoof determines what you like based solely on what stories you click on to read. Asking for specific feedback, like voting or rating of stories, is too much to ask of users, Clarke says, noting that only a very small percentage of people who watched videos on Revver ever actually rated them. By analyzing what you tend to click on, Thoof will return results that it thinks you are more likely to click on than others. The result, over time, is a perfectly tailored news page for an individual. See the screen shot below.
So will this work? Clarke argues it will. in an email exchange where we were debating my position (the masses want popular news) v. his (the masses want tailored news), he writes:
Historically, news has been delivered in a one-to-many manner, meaning that lots of people tend to get the same news at the same time, but I think this is more of a bug than a feature. People don’t necessarily *want* to be shown the same stuff that everyone else is seeing, but the limitations of the technology somewhat required that this be the case. They would much rather see things that are specifically tailored to their interests, its just that either that option hasn’t existed, or it has been poorly executed.
The company is based in Austin and has five employees. They’ve raised a $1 million round of financing from Austin Ventures, Ron Conway and others. They launch today by invite only. Like Gmail and Joost, active users can invite a limited number of others…we’re working on getting some invites for readers.
Check out the profile for Thoof.
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