Claria's PersonalWeb Takes Next Step in Web Personalization by Automatically Customizing Consumer Homepages
Monday, 03 April 2006
Claria announced the beta release of its new PersonalWeb service, which is a personalized homepage for consumers. PersonalWeb anonymously recognizes a user's unique interests based on Web surfing patterns and automatically organizes their content, news and information on a homepage that is customized for each individual user.
According to Claria, PersonalWeb (www.personalweb.com) is designed to provide consumers with a personalized and constantly updated Web page, without any manual setup or effort. It automatically organizes content already of interest to each unique user, and discovers and auditions new content based on their changing interests.
Also, PersonalWeb provides users with links to their Web-based e-mail accounts, access to their favorite search engines, RSS feeds from their favorite sites, and content and product recommendations (i.e., advertisements) based on their online interests.
The beta release is intended as a proof of concept of Claria's personalization engine. Over the next few quarters the company will concentrate on adding key features to PersonalWeb as well as supporting additional popular browser platforms.
In development since 2004, PersonalWeb utilizes RelevancyRank, Claria's proprietary content ranking algorithm, to identify and display the appropriate content for each user. RelevancyRank relies solely on anonymous consumer behavior to make content recommendations, so PersonalWeb software does not collect and use any personal information.
Claria will work in partnership with publishers to create private label versions of PersonalWeb for distribution to consumers who have an affinity for publisher content. Publishers' content will be featured within a co-branded PersonalWeb page offered directly to consumers. Claria will be announcing content and distribution partnerships with publishers in the second quarter of 2006.
"We are excited to introduce a beta version of PersonalWeb, the first consumer application utilizing our new personalization platform," said Scott VanDeVelde, President and Chief Executive Officer of Claria. "We will continue to build on the PersonalWeb platform and in the coming months we will be adding features and content based on feedback from our users and publisher partners."
In a previous announcement on March 21, 2006, (http://www.claria.com/pr/060321.html), Claria announced its plans to sell GAIN advertising assets and exit the adware business by the end of the second quarter of 2006, and to focus solely on online content personalization services, such as PersonalWeb.
In a separate announcement today, (http://www.claria.com/pr/060403a.html), Claria announced it has secured US $40 million in financing with investments from SOFTBANK America, Rogers Communications, Asia Pacific Ventures, and Sand Hill Capital.