Finovate2009, an event centered around the future of finance, is on today in New York City so expect a couple of interesting announcements from the online money management industry this morning and later this week. We had previously covered Billshrink’s new offering and Outright.com opening up its beta to the public.
Later today, content recommendation and discovery software builder Strands will announce that its personal finance subsidiary moneyStrands has teamed up with Savings.com to bring personalized online coupon recommendations to the company’s personal budgeting & online money management platform.
The cutbacks continue, even at seemingly healthy startups. Social recommendation engine Strands let exactly 10 percent, or 14 people go (7 in the U.S. and 7 in Spain), the company confirms. Strands has raised a total of $55 million, still employs 125 people, and is hiring for other positions. It also just announced a mobile version for Nokia S60 phones.
Qik, which lets you stream live video from your cell phone, also laid off about 10 percent of its employees, which in its case amounted to five people. We got a tip that the reason for the layoffs is because the startup could not raise a $10 to $15 million round, but a spokesperson says that is not true and that we should stay tuned. We hope its not true because we love Qik. The company so far has raised only $4 million, but its investors include Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen.
The recommendation engine Strands has released a new “Plug-and Play” product recommendation service that will allow online retailers to generate Amazon-like recommendations. eCommerce providers can implement the service through either the site’s API or with a widget plug-in, and Strands says that setup should take as little as 30 minutes.
Earlier this month Strands launched its flagship site, Strands.com, which sets out to “help people discover new stuff”. The new plugin aims to do the same for external eCommerce sites, while increasing profits in the process. The new service will be available with either a flat monthly fee or through a revenue share program.
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.
