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February 14, 2013

Inq Mobile App Gives Personalized MATERIAL Based on User's Social Media Footprint

By Colleen Lynch, TMCnet Contributor

Increasingly, tech companies are leveraging social media to deliver more personalized services, and Inq Mobile is no exception; the company announced today that its new service, MATERIAL, is in beta, which maps a user’s social DNA to hand-pick news stories and videos to offer on the user’s smartphone.



“MATERIAL uses over millions of pieces of content to deliver the perfect combination that you will find entertaining, interesting and informative,” said Inq Mobile’s CEO and cofounder, Ken Johnstone.

MATERIAL has high hopes for its service, as the amount of social media content online today is astronomical, so it is a near-impossible feat to tackle so much information and use it for any specific purpose.

This is exactly what MATERIAL purports to be able to do.

“We have used our combined Android (News - Alert) and social network knowledge to create MATERIAL which analyzes individual tastes and interests to give each person a unique experience mapped to their social DNA,” Johnstone explained.

MATERIAL will primarily leverage Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert), and to sign up the user only needs to download the app from the Google Splay store, and then enter his/her account’s information.

The app works in a similar way to the popular interests-based site, StumbleUpon (News - Alert), but instead of having users enter their interests manually, MATERIAL does the work for you via a specialized algorithm.

What’s more, if you used to be into baseball but don’t care for it anymore, preferring hockey for example, the app will recognize this based on your social media footprint and alter its offerings to reflect this change.

Inq Mobile additionally touts the app’s graphics, uniquely tailored to each story the MATERIAL hosts – the app does not simply choose the lazy route of opening the content on the Web and taking you to it, but offers the information always within the app in its own format.

Another feature Inq Mobile is highlighting is that MATERIAL takes news stories from unorthodox places on the Web, not just the usual news sources. In this way, the app can broaden the user’s experience on the Internet and introduce him/her to new preferred websites.

The beta version of MATERIAL for Android is available now from Google (News - Alert) Play, but versions optimized for tablets, iOS and desktops will follow shortly.

For a detailed exhibit of the app, see Inq’s YouTube channel.




Edited by Braden Becker
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