Facebook vs. Who? Users Stay Longer on Personal News Engine Genieo Than on Facebook

HERZLIA, Israel, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Maybe Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are wrong, privacy isn't dead.  Ultra-private, ultra-personalized news engine Genieo.com announced today that its users spend more time on their pages than on Facebook, according to statistics independently generated by random groups of thousands of users, making Genieo one of the stickiest sites on the Web.

Genieo users spent 300 minutes per month online, according to the analytics. Facebook reported last week that its users spend approximately 100 minutes per month online, according to comScore.

Unlike other news readers, Genieo is a completely automatic, completely private personalization engine that can sense the difference between intention (I am looking for a new apartment) and attention (I will always care about stories related to Venture Capital); it can differentiate between caring about Derek Jeter all the time (you are a scary stalker fan) and only caring about him from May to October (you're just a Yankees fan). 

Another innovative personalization feature involves Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Genieo brings its users the tweets, posts, or Facebook status updates they care about that they might otherwise miss.  Genieo's powerful algorithm will search for your active interests – not just in the news stream but also in your social stream, including live events or posts you missed because you weren't online or because Facebook's algorithm didn't promote them in your feed.   Say you "Liked" a blog just once but then forgot about it, but that same blog happened to post a story months later about venture capital – or Derek Jeter – Genieo would know that you'd be interested and put it on your personal home page. Or if a friend you don’t speak with often puts up a tweet, Facebook link or status update that matches your interests, that will show up on your Genieo page as well.

"We believe that privacy is essential to personalization, and personalization is essential for the Internet's next steps forward, notes Sol Tzvi, co-founder and CEO of Genieo. "Genieo brings real value to its users because we take a panoramic view of personalization:  we use a different approach for each of the users' online tasks. The way Genieo deals with the user's social stream is totally different from the way we deal with news or blog feeds. And combining all those feeds together in a smart and personalized way keeps our users coming back to their Genieo pages.  That's why we're so sticky.  It has super interesting implications across the board."

"Some programs call themselves personalized, when they are really just customized APIs," added Tzvi. "These numbers for Genieo validate that consumers respond when you bring them content that matters to them, that they didn't know existed or that they would have missed."

The user numbers were reported for the period from July to September, 2010, by a large group of users mostly based in the U.S. who had recently installed and were using Genieo.  

About Genieo

In Genieo, for the first time, privacy and personalization are combined to bring content that is as dynamic as its users' lives: connected, evolving, relevant – and private.  Genieo's proprietary algorithms privately detects users' intentions and attention and delivers interesting and relevant content like blogs, videos, Facebook links, Twitter feeds, or breaking news.  Genieo also automatically detects the difference between short-term interests like an apartment search, or a long-term interest like news of a specific sports team, favorite artist or even a local topic like school news.

Unlike other personalization solutions, Genieo protects the user's privacy by keeping all the information on the user's computer or mobile device and not sharing it with a server.  Genieo has enormous implications for advertising and media; highly targeted ads can be precisely delivered without revealing personal information.

Founded in 2008 with 15 employees, Genieo Innovation's headquarters and development center are located at the heart of the hi-tech industrial area in Herzlia, Israel.   For more information, go to www.genieo.com.

SOURCE Genieo