Thaindian News

London, April 21 (ANI): An application is being developed that will “give you what you want before you knew you wanted it.”

According to Futureful, a Finnish startup is building a predictive discovery iPad app that will deliver personalised information.

And how the application is going to work? With the use of social networking sites.

Futureful’s algorithms glean information from social feeds, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Delicious, Tumblr and Flickr, to locate trending topics.

Algorithms crunch users’ interests, behaviour and posts with those of friends and other users to suggest subjects for further exploration.

Tapping one or more of these subjects on the touch-screen interface will generate a collection of web pages that can be swiped like a magazine.

Futureful said it is bringing serendipity into the game by proposing sites beyond users’ pre-defined interests, an idea intended to counter suggestions that a high degree of personalised information will inevitably narrow people’s worldview.

“What is the point of personalisation if it only reaffirms what you already know,” New Scientist quoted Marko Anderson of Futureful, as saying.

“We’re not just suggesting things that people would be interested in, but we’re also helping them discover new stuff,” added Anderson, whose app relies on a combination of natural language processing and network mathematics.

The more data the system has on a large number of people, the easier it becomes to find commonalities between individuals. (ANI)