Nuzzel: The startup created by a social network pioneer
There is a super easy way to see the news. The key is to download the nuzzel app and you’ll get notified every time your friends share a story.
Nuzzel is pretty simple and easy and that’s a reason on its own to at least make someone try it. It basically provides a social, real-time platform that allows people to see the news that their friends share.
It was founded in September 2012 so one can say that is already ‘old’ but it hasn’t had the recognition it deserves. The initial idea came from the problem of social news overload. So what it aims to do is de-clutter your social news feeds by presenting the top-shared or most relevant news stories for you. A lot of us feel the need to check every single site that we have bookmarked in order to feel fully informed and caught up with what is going on. The thing with that tactic is that is awfully time consuming. Since Nuzzel came around a new perspective has made an entrance. People don’t have to read the news anymore because their friends do it for them and then let them know if anything is actually interesting. What is really unique about that is the feeling of knowing that you are getting the most interesting pieces that are actually what you would most likely have chosed yourself.
The aggregation process is actually mostly automated. Users log in with their Twitter and/or Facebook profiles.The system’s algorithms go through a user’s activity streams and pull out the news articles that have been shared or recommended by the most number of followers. Then the service also uses these semantic signals to generate recommended content that hasn’t been explicitly shared by anyone in a user’s social graph.
When it comes to the management team Nuzzel has a rather small group of people that are actually involved.
Kent Lindstrom is one of the two people that helped to create the app. He is the COO of the company and in general is an experienced operator of global businesses.
Previously, he was also the COO of Neo Innovation, CEO & founder of mobile startup PlacePop, and CEO & CFO of Friendster.
Speaking of the app Friendster — the first ever social network that actually gained popularity and is still credited as giving birth to the modern social media movement. — the other person that completes the team is Jonathan Abrams.
He is the founder of the app, the man behind the whole idea and the CEO of the company. Abrams is a pioneering social media entrepreneur.
Previously, the founder & CEO of Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks, and a software engineer at Netscape and Nortel. He is also a Managing Partner of Founders Den.
Nuzzel’s aim is to help simple users to get informed without being overwhelmed or missing anything. The amount of information being thrown at us in the current days is too much to handle. Not everyone can be online all the time. Automatically assembling a newsfeed from your social networking accounts is the whole meaning of the app. It helps discover the best news most shared by friends on Twitter or Facebook. Although at first one could only log in on the app by his twitter or facebook account, Nuzzel now offers the option to anyone to open the website to find feeds built off of what people are talking about on Twitter. As Nuzzel is a social news service it includes platforms such as: Phone application (both for ios and android), a Website and a daily Newsletter in order to stay conected with its users at all times.
Nuzzel sends push notifications Whenever a critical mass of your friends share the same link.
Nuzzel will show a main news story. Below it, some interesting tweets from one’s friends. Below that, there are sometimes links to other aggregators. Some stories point the reader toward related comments from Reddit users.
The Discover section is there for people who want to browse recommended feeds, some created by Nuzzel users, others created by Nuzzel itself. This makes the app usable by people who want to keep up on certain types of news, regardless of who they follow.
The news stories aggregated on Nuzzel are mainy posted on other websites. But they may as well have original content on their Site. After all they base much of their Service on user-contributed content. Nuzzel offers the option to their users to Curate a daily Nuzzel Newsletter and grow their audience. They can include stories they find interesting and add a personal touch with a headline and comments.
Users access the website and application for instant information for FREE. All of Nuzzel’s services are completely out of charge. There are no ads, no premium upgrades and no sponsored stories.
Nuzzel’s offices are at Founders Den. The invitation-only San Francisco co-working space for entrepreneurs. Abrams is actually a founder and investot of the place. Nuzzel occupies a small team of only ten and has a few meetings each month. Some Key Positions that are mainly needed: •Web Software Engineer •Android Engineer •Ops Engineer. Noticeable is the fact that most of the work is being done by Abrams himself as he has said when asked he loves spending time developing new feautures for the app and even in cases when he doesn’t know a certain code he doesn’t give up until he can do what has in his mind.
Nuzzel is one of the lucky apps. Is backed by some angelList investors and is also self-funded. It has a strong mentorship that increases the chances for success.In total it has raised $5.1 million in 4 Rounds from 47 Investors. Some if them include: Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, IDG Ventures, SoftTech VC, and several angel List investors including Eric Ries, Max Levchin, Michael Birch, and Naval Ravikant. Also Akash Garg the director of engineering at Uber, and formerly the director of engineering at Twitter. Matt Cutts former head of the anti-webspam team at Google. Nikesh Arora formerly the vice chairman of SoftBank and formerly the chief business officer at Google. Marc Benioff CEO and founder of Salesforce. Advisors also include: Rob Bailey, CEO of DataSift; Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite; and Jay Adelson, former CEO of Digg.
One problem that Nuzzel faces is the lack of time spent in customer relationships. The acquisition of potential users is basically automated but the act of consumer retention is not easy or simple and it can’t be taken for granted. It needs constant communication and a certain amount of attention given to the users. Nuzzel has a Tumblr blog and a Twitter account but both are not at all active neither are they promoted by the app’s founders. They share a lot of Nuzzel’s content on their own twitter account but some may think that that is not enough or the best aproach. The only thing that seems to be working is the daily newsletter that anyone subscribed receives everyday in the email.
When an idea strikes and then someone has put a lot of his time and energy and money for that to be made a reality, is somewhat naive to presume that everything will work out on their own. At first sight it gives someone the impression that Nuzzel is abandoned and left alone to face what the future may hold. Nonetheless is an app that deserves to be noticed and used because it really provides a fresh way to learn what’s new which is easy, simple and personalized.
