My6Sense: Personalized Reading Recommendations That Actually Work (500 Invites)
Personalized recommendations have always been one of those technologies that look great on paper, but hardly ever work quite as well as advertised. This week, we got a chance to test my6sense, which takes your feed subscriptions and then recommends interesting posts based on your own reading habits. My6sense's current focus is on providing a good mobile experience, though the company will soon also launch its service on the web as well.
While it did take a bit of training before the application fully recognized our preferences and before it returned really good results, the overall results were very impressive.
Features
So how does it work? When you first sign up, my6sense can import your RSS feeds (from Google Reader, Netvibes, MyYahoo, or from a standard OPML file). After that, all you have to do is read your feeds through the web app and my6sense will automatically learn from your reading behavior (my6sense calls this "digital intuition"). You can also explicitly give a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' on any post.
My6sense is also a very capable RSS reader in its own right, with the built-in ability to share items on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn, as well as by email. One very nice feature of the app is that it also allows you to see comments on posts from supported blogging platforms.
Currently, my6sense is only available as a web app, but the company expects to have a native iPhone application in the App Store by the time the service launches its public beta early next year.
Training
On a mobile device, good recommendations can be quite a time saver. Having to scroll through numerous feeds can quickly become frustratingly slow. In our tests, it took a day or two of regular usage before my6sense started to come back with really good recommendations. As Kristie Wells, my6sense's VP of Marketing and Community Relations told us, the company is working on providing a better out-of-the-box experience that will learn faster, but given our positive experience, training the software off and on for a day or two is well worth it.
Attention
We also talked to the two co-founders of my6sense, Barak Hachamov and Avinoam Rubinstain, earlier last month and we asked them if they were going to support any of the open attention profiles like the APML, which would make it possible for users to take their attention profile and transfer it to other news readers. For now, however, the company says that it is focused on providing a good user experience for its alpha testers, though they didn't rule out support for the APML in the future.
Invites
Our experience with my6sense has been very positive, but you don't have to take our word for it. While the service is still in private alpha, they have provided us with 500 invites for our readers. Just click here to claim yours and let us know if it worked as well for you as it did for us.
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Frederic, thank you so much for taking the time to get to know my6sense! The team has built an incredible learning machine that will continue to develop your 'digital intuition' the more you use it, so would be great to check back with you in two months to get your thoughts.
Thanks again!
Cool! ...seems like the killer app for mobile!
I actually tried it and think it is not really good. I found the recommandations of low level and still prefer go through my twitter and friendfeed account.
Looks like a feature to me at best. not a company.
I'm a my6sense user for the last two weeks and i must say it works great for me.
I imported my 127 feeds from my Google Reader and after 2-3 days of usage i really get very very interesting posts on my iPhone. Again, the amazing thing is that i don't have to do anything special besides reading my favorite posts.
my6sense, keep up the good work !
my6sense great, I love the name, I have used few readers on my iPhone but it takes me long time to find what I need. I will join the Alpha and try my6sense, this could be my new reader app.
I tried it for a week and think that for an Alpha product claiming to provide “digital intuition” it AWESOME!!!
Looks like an excellent idea. I'm still always thrilled when I find an interesting blog as I don't find them very often, so a system of personalised recommendations sounds like a really useful tool. I just signed up for an invite, we'll see how this goes...
Mike - we believe it is, but the proof is in the pudding. We are seeing commments like this more and more - http://twitter.com/jfouts/status/1039167104
Eric - thank you for your feedback. my6sense works really well when importing more than just the social sites into the system to start as we find Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook get things a little wonky when there is not much else to balance it out. Not sure why this happens, but it is a bug we have logged and are looking into it. I was experiencing the same thing when I started (just had Twitter and Facebook), and when I pulled Facebook out of the mix - the 'magic' started to happen. I let the service run for a couple of days without Facebook and then added it back in and it is really good now. And the key right now is actually using the service for a couple of says so it has time to learn your preferences. One day does not a digital intuition make. As Frederic mentioned above, we are working to improve the out of the box experience so it is more immediate, but it does work - albeit with a few tweaks during this alpha phase. I would encourage you to try again if you wanna test me, or maybe wait for the beta version coming in the Spring.
Sarah - Glad to hear it is working well for you Sarah. I was one who stopped using feed readers as I could not keep up, I now have 300+ running through my6sense as I can consume more and spend less time doing so. And we are in the early stages, so can't wait to see how the service matures!
Iva - look forward to your feedback once you start using the service.
Ann - Thank you. Add more feeds, push the system. :)
Paulina - Like Iva, we welcome you into the alpha and look forward to your feedback.
One of the items I need to finish this week (wait, it is Friday already, eek) - is the product documentation, which I believe will help user experience and set expectations a little better. I won't promise you will see the magic after one day (as the service is today), but using it for a couple of days with an assortment of feeds will produce results. That I will promise. Happy to have a chat with folks if you would like to dig in a little deeper.
When I saw the reference to reading, I thought it must be about books... another sign of age, I guess...