Today sees the launch of Yotify, an online alert system that aims to make the web “work for you”. At a high level, Yotify can best be described as a very sophisticated version of Google Alerts, which allows users to get notifications whenever a pre-determined keyword pops up in a news article or blog post. But instead of simply monitoring keywords, Yotify allows users to track variables across a number of different services, including price changes, event ticket availability, and user profile modifications.
Users can access a listing of their current alerts (called Scouts) from their Yotify homepage, which intuitively displays all results inline. The site also offers an opt-in Email digest, which will periodically forward a listing of all relevant matches across each service to a specified address. Yotify employs a filtering system to weed out duplicate entires, and also makes it easy to prioritize results from each Scout.
At launch the site supports over a dozen services, including offerings from travel sites, eBay, and Shopping.com. CEO Ron Bouganim is quick to point out that the Scouts for each of these services are tightly integrated with their APIs - Yotify isn’t just performing complex text based searches.
One potential use case for Yotify involves LinkedIn, which is included among the site’s supported services. An executive (or headhunter) keen on recruiting a particular engineer could use Yotify to monitor the user’s LinkedIn profile, so they’d know when that person’s employment status changed. Other applications include price watching (through the Shopping.com Scout) or an event notification run through eBay’s Tickets for whenever a concert is announced in your area.
Beyond automated alerts, Yotify also includes a number of social features. Users can share Scouts with each other, which can be useful when multiple people are looking for the same thing (for example, a group of friends looking for housing could share a Craigslist Scout for apartment rentals). The site also allows users to broadcast questions to FriendFeed and Facebook, treating responses from friends as another Scout on the main Yotify page.
Yotify doesn’t seem to have done anything extraordinary - many of the alerts available can already be achieved with more specialized services. But the site has created an intuitive web dashboard and email alert system that aggregates these notifications in a single place, which could make it appealing to a much broader audience than its alternatives.
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Interesting, this is kind of similar to what we have set up with iMacros for our own internal use to watch prices and availability of certain products. Just that our own interface does not look as pretty
The main drawback of Yotify seems to be that it is limited to supported websites, which will never include smaller specialty websites. Having our own system, we can make an imacros for each in a few minutes.
Our price alert service does what you just want. Simply enter product page URLs from any shopping sites and your email address, and we will watch their prices for you. We work with any shopping sites, not just a limited number of sites.
So be sure to give us a try at ShoppingNotes.com. Thanks!
Well, we use iMacros to scrape 50+ hotel booking and travel sites for internal use. Its a large setup with more than seven servers. The data we retrieve is used by a large company, so it is not for my personal shopping
What about the legal side? Does anybody know if they obtained permissions to web scrape the sites?
lol what, it isnt illegal newb, and if they arent using an API the only thing they need to do is check for robots.txt and thats it, and thats only if they want to honor the sites request to not grab their data.
Obviously, they are using API’s.
Craigslist and (most) other websites do not have APIs.
Um… APIs do exist.
The RentRent API to returns the rentals listed on Craigslist.
http://rentrentorg.blogspot.com/
Sounds like this is the tip of the ice berg for real estate applications:
(for example, a group of friends looking for housing could share a Craigslist Scout for apartment rentals).
Eager to see if Yotify accesses MLS inventory in the future, and allows users to integrate matches from for sale by owner properties, new construction, foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, etc as well. Any other real estate innovators and tech savvy home buyers, renters, interested in exploring how we can use Yotify to reduce transaction costs (ie. avoid traditional full fee commissions)?
Kind of a pain to use really. The great thing about Google Alerts is that you just set a word and it scrapes the whole Web for you. This appears to look in specific places that you choose manually. Kind of useful if you’re looking for site-specific alerts but…you can do some of that with RSS feeds already. I don’t anticipate using this.
Very true, but unfortunately, Google Alerts just stop working for me and I know I’m not the only one.
Not sure if it is wide spread or just happens once in a while, but can be really annoying when you rely on the service.
As an early user of Yotify, this service has proven incredibly useful in two specific applications:
1. My search for an apartment rental on Craig’s List. I was able to set up a Scout, using keyword specifics (3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, parking, patio, cats ok, etc.) which gathered only listings that met my requirements. This is a much more detailed option than CL currently provides.
This was a great enhancement to my prior search experience where everyday I’d have to go to CL, type in my requirements and sift through all the postings. Yotify was a big time saver.
2. Searching for a used laptop. I created a Scout for a Mac laptop. I listed certain criteria, price point, etc. and was able to immediately generate a list of available options. Again a big time saver.
So far, so good.
Does this benefit SEO or backlinks in any kind of way for bloggers and website content publishers?
Most of us hope not, you friggin spammer.
Why is that a spammer question?? I would think any site that is new and trying to get visits would need to consider free links from bloggers and/or content providers via feeds. This site included - it’s all about getting repeats and links - you know that.
Very useful and well designed service. This is a great way to manage alert on multiple sites. I wish they’ll support more data sources soon.
Yotify pretty much covers against ‘scraping’ attacks by only implementing existing APIs: these are companies that have decided scraping would improve their image more then it would disrupt their service. I guess they will have to choose between being the central website (not a stable business model unless they integrate more, with plug-ins and apps to be even more flexible a key-holder) and going beyond that, and either offering API-like service to sties willing to have it, but unable to set it up, or abusing the robots.txt, EULA and implicit agreement in their way.
Scraping sounds potentially ’sloppy’ but polling RSS feeds from these sites and then using the keywords to finetune what to send to the user…
This would allow yotify to expand their efforts to pretty much any content site available today. Also, where is the mobile and desktop endpoints?
BTW: Yahoo and Windows Live Alerts have been polling RSS feeds for notifications for years….
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Very crowded space to compete in - looks current and fresh. Not sure it has enough freshness to get the required attention.
They need more incentives - Coupons, special offers, etc. Right now I can’t see myself returning after this comment.
http://afewtips.com
As far as we know, we ShoppingNotes.com have the best price alert service. Simply enter any product page URLs and your email address on our front page, and rest assured that you’ll be notified whenever the prices change. We work with any shopping sites, not just a limited set of sites.
So if you’re constantly looking for the best prices, definitely give us a try!
Nice process - simple and direct - I gave it try.
I would like to see a more obvious and clear privacy statement. I gave you a seldom visited email address. If I felt better about what you will do with the email address I would give the email address I look at more. But very fast and simple to use. I’m curious what it was written in?
Thanks a lot for trying us out! You’re right. We need to get our privacy statement up there. Meanwhile, I can guarantee you that we never spam or sell your email addresses, as many of our satisfied users would testify. I’m sure you will know this after being with us for a while.
Our backend code is written in Perl, the usual suspect for doing “data extraction”.
Don’t people update their linkedin profile once they have joined at a new place so how does it help recruiters really ?
I remember using such a windows based application years ago. Forgot the name but clearly remember having something to do with fetching or rover. Anyway, a nifty little service but easily replicated elsewhere.
I registered, confirmed my email, and logged in — but even so, wasn’t able to save a “Scout”, I.e., alert. As such, I’m not so sure that this service is ready for prime time.
That said, I like the idea and wish these guys well in their efforts.
Enter your email information to retrieve address book contacts
Email: Password:
What are the privacy implications with these types of sites?
kind of sounds like yoda