Strands has made a second recruitment in its effort to develop a Mint competitor called moneyStrands that leverages the same recommendation engine behind its video and music products.
Just over two weeks ago Strands acquired Expensr, and now the company is announcing its acquisition of NetworthIQ. Both are personal finance applications that Strands wanted mostly for their human capital, but also for some of their technology assets. The terms of both deals were not disclosed.
While the media has yet to get its hands on moneyStrands and give it a spin, the product has been in development since December and it marks Strands’ attempt to aggressively apply its recommendation technology to new fields.
Just how that technology will be applied to personal finance is not altogether clear. The core Strands technology digests and analyzes behavioral information to make its recommendations. This is fairly straightforward when it comes to music: frequently play two or more songs with one another and Strands will learn something about how you prefer to experience music.
Apparently this technique will transfer over into personal finance by analyzing the sets of purchases that consumers make and then recommending how they can make better purchases. This analysis will not only consider the various purchases that one consumer makes; it will also compare these purchases to those made by others.
Aside from detailed personalized recommendations, Strands hopes to differentiate itself from competitors like Mint and Wesabe by providing superior mobile support and widget integration.
Strands is mum on the fate of NetworthIQ as a stand alone service, but I think we can safely assume it will shut down eventually as its team focuses on the development of moneyStrands.
In this case, users will have to upload all their purchases to the site somehow… That’s kinda cumbersome and I cannot see a huge number of people using it.
However, if they offered an analysis of income and expenses and savings of users - especially for those who want to get out of debt - that would be cool! Why do you think Suze Orman is so popular? People need someone to open their eyes to the vast amount of money that they spend for fluff, to some savings techniques, etc. That’s where the recipe for success is.
All of a sudden, Strands is trying to be a lot of things for a lot of different people. I thought they were a music company just a couple months back? It looks like they are trying to establish a hub for personal information now? Whatever they may be doing, they sure have plenty of funding to back it…
This is the first I heard of it and I am interested in learning more since I use NetworthIQ quite religiously. I hope they don’t just disband the web site. That would be a shame.
When I checked out NetworthIQ, I was excited to see a competitor to Mint maybe having loan access (mint does not yet). However, NetworthIQ is a worthless product that requires manual input, making me do all the work for no value. There’s no analytics, no suggestions, and why would I care about sharing my net worth? I made my own db to track account by account each month with a simple chart and find a ton more value in my 5hr solution than NetworthIQ’s online junk.
Thanks for the post Mark. As much as I love being referred to as “human capital” I know it’s a positive statement and I’ll take it as a compliment ;-).
@MikeT Actually NetworthIQ doesn’t handle purchases at all, it goes a step back and just lets you track asset and liability levels from month to month. It’s a simpler approach to solving the “transaction hell” of quicken days past. moneyStrands is going to be much more intelligent while helping you manage your money in a more automatic manner.
@Pinyo Thanks for the comment and I really appreciate your support. There are no plans to disband the web site at this point, though yes the primary focus will be on building moneyStrands. Let me know if you have any questions.
@John K One person’s junk is another person’s treasure :-). I completely agree that building a net worth tracking solution is simple. Building one that lets you track with thousands of other people is not so simple I don’t think. Admittedly it’s not for everybody, but our members find it to be a great motivational and collaborative tool to help make better financial decisions.
@John K. Mint.com will have access to auto loans, student loans, mortgages and HELOCs in next month’s release. No worries, it’s coming. With investments rolling out now, you’ll soon be able to see your complete net worth.
Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com