Name: Summify
Quick Pitch: Summify e-mails users five stories they should read based on what their friends are talking about on social networks.
Genius Idea: Making a product so simple it’s impossible to be overwhelmed by it.
In attempting to build the perfect RSS feeder, Summify founders Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat quickly learned one thing: the world does not need another RSS feeder.
Their original product ranked news items in real time based on who in the users’ network was sharing them. In order to promote it, the team sent e-mails to their users with a summary of the top five stories suggested for them at that time. Everybody opened the emails, Paşoi says — but nobody returned to the website.
On Wednesday, the team launched a new version of its product, exclusively dedicated to delivering the top five news stories to users based on what their friends shared and liked.
“You get your stories once a day or every few hours … and then you’re done,” explains Paşoi. “That’s the feeling that people actually enjoy — that they’re done and there’s not more that they need to read.”
Here’s how it works: users connect their RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, and Facebook profiles to Summify. An algorithm takes into account what feeds they follow and what their friends are talking about, and determines what they should read. Stories that are unusually popular on social networks are also accounted for. The resulting list is e-mailed to users directly.
By default, Summify sends its users five stories once a day. But users can...
