TechCrunch50: Thoora Unveils Real Time News Discovery Service that Tears Down
the Silos Between Social and Traditional Media
Thoora's proprietary platform scours the Internet to find the stories people are talking about - bringing together traditional news articles, blog posts, comments and Tweets
Thoora is one of 50 companies selected by TechCrunch to launch at TechCrunch50 2009 being held at the
In real-time, Thoora identifies the most interesting stories from the entire blogosphere, Twitter and all traditional media sources, providing users with access to the most unique perspectives and voices. Thoora uses a proprietary and cutting-edge filtering, clustering, and ranking algorithm to identify the stories with the strongest 'signals' (i.e. the most activity, comments, posts, updates, etc.). Thoora then ranks the stories based on the size of the reaction they generate.
By integrating the three content categories - blogs, Twitter, and traditional media coverage - Thoora tears down the silos between social and traditional media to give readers a richer perspective on the stories that really matter.
"The news is changing - it's no longer just about the New York Times. There's a wealth of content on blogs and Twitter, but today's reader still deals with a very fragmented experience of having to visit one site for a news article and another site for a blogger's perspective," said
Thoora's news aggregation and story ranking algorithm is completely automated, meaning there's no human editorial selection or curation. As a result, the platform offers a truly unbiased perspective on the hottest stories of the day - leveraging the wisdom of crowds, rather than focusing on the stories handpicked by a small group of editors or A-List bloggers.
And unlike other crowdsourcing and aggregation services, Thoora relies on people's implicit actions such as blog posts, comments and tweets rather than voting or link analysis. This lets Thoora uncover voices that otherwise would never be heard or discovered.
Since
The free service can be used to discover the day's biggest stories, as well as browse the top ranked stories in key categories such as business, entertainment, sports, lifestyle and science/technology.
Thoora also lets users do searches, which combined with its extensive and powerful content sourcing and technology platform enables users to mine the hidden parts of the blogosphere and read the news stories that specifically interest them.
Thoora is currently in private-beta and available by invitation-only. Beta invites are available to TechCrunch50 attendees and TechCrunch readers, as well as a handful of other top-tier blogs.
Thoora will be open to the general public in the coming weeks at www.thoora.com where people can discover What the World is Talking About.
About Thoora
Thoora helps people discover What the World is Talking About by delivering the news that is attracting the most interest and reaction - making it easy for people to filter through the noise to find the content that offers the most value, insight and perspective. Thoora's real-time algorithm takes a unique approach to delivering news by focusing on the stories that everyone's talking about, rather than what a small group of editors or A-list bloggers deems important. Thoora's ability to sort through more than 81 million blogs and 4,500 mainstream media sources is driven by its leading edge and proprietary filtering, clustering and ranking algorithm. This lets Thoora offer a unique perspective on what's happening in a truly unique and unbiased manner. For more information visit http://www.thoora.com.
About TechCrunch50
Founded in 2007 by leading technology blog TechCrunch and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, the TechCrunch50 conference provides a platform for early-stage, and frequently unfunded, companies to launch for the first time to the technology industry's most influential venture capitalists, corporations, angel investors, fellow entrepreneurs and the international media. Companies are selected to participate exclusively on merit. TechCrunch50 is supported by corporate sponsors Google, Microsoft, Bing, MySpace and Facebook, as well as venture capital and legal-advisory firms including Sequoia Capital,
Trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
For further information: MEDIA CONTACT: Allison Bethurem, FutureWorks PR, (510) 508-4034, [email protected]
Share this article