Zync brings Personalization to Local Search
By Vivek | September 10th, 2007 at 10:19 am ET
Zync, the Boston based startup, seems to be talking just the right words at the right time - Personalization in Local Search. Searching for a place visit in a big city like Boston can be pain, since you don’t really know whose recommendation to trust when you are searching on sites like Yelp and likes. Zync is looking to take out this pain point. Launched over the weekend, right now only for Boston based users, the startup has developed prediction algorithm that enables you to personalize the local event space.
Zync looks at your tastes, and the opinions of people you tend to trust more to drive in more recommendations from similar people. Zync calls this prediction model as People Like YouTM. Zync is currently serving recommendations in the restaurants, activities, museums,…. space.
Personally, I haven’t tried out this app since I am not based in Boston and can’t tell how good the recommendations are. Still thinking about the core assumption Zync where it assumes that users will keep checking back on the site pretty often to enable it to deliver better recommendations, I think it is a tough ask. It would for sure be difficult for early adopter crowd to consider this as a-must-visit-everyday site.
on September 10th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Agreed on all points Vivek, including the last that requiring people to come back to the site regularly to train the system is a tall ask. However, you can imagine eventually having this service wherever you need it, including your mobile device. So the long term idea is that you use and train the system wherever is most convenient.
-brad (ceo, zync)
on September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I think the size of the dataset that you need to deliver valuable personalization does not lend itself to small focused geos. That’s by far the biggest stumbling block/hard problem to solve for zync