What does it do? GyPSii allows you to find places close to you, create places and add content to them, find friends who are closeby and share information with social networks like FaceBook. Currently the content is mainly user-generated but curated 3rd party data is being added. There isn’t a lot of content yet in Europe since the majority of users are Chinese. The Android application supports photo and text content only but applications for other phones also covers audio and video.

So far so FourSquare… but the ultimate ambition of GyPSii is to develop an index of place content which is analagous to Google’s index of web sites or FaceBook’s social graph. To this end the company has developed an algorithm called PlaceRank. As the amount of geotagged information explodes, filtering will become crucial especially given the constraints of the mobile device screen. PlaceRank combines location, demographic and social graph information to define the relevance of place information to a particular user. Machine learning is employed so that the user profile continually evolves based on behaviour. Large scale analysis can be performed faster and with fewer machines than other techniques and data is processed as it becomes available rather than periodically, allowing the index to be continuously updated in real time. PlaceRank is curently cutting its teeth in deployments with two Chinese mobile operators (Unicom and China Mobile).

The Business

GyPSii is pursuing quite a different business strategy from other apps which tie location to user content like  Brightkite or Mobypicture. Rather than acquiring users mainly via the app stores, the founders went straight for the handset manufacturers and mobile operators. As a result the application will now be preloaded on all LG and Samsung phones globally and well as on a new Garmin device. Since many users don’t really care which application they are using as long as it has the basic features required, pre-installs seem like a smart move. A wide range of phones are targeted, not just top end smart phones like iPhone and Android. The next phase will involve 3rd parties using the API to access some or all of Gypsii’s functionality, e.g. the Garmin device is using the friend-finding functionality.

Income comes from advertising via revenue sharing deals with the manufacturers and mobile operators as well as licensing the API. PlaceRank will be used to “micro-target” advertising. Coupons offered by businesses near the current location are proving popular in the Chinese market and click-through rates are high.

So what are the Chinese up to?

GyPSii’s biggest user base is in China where it tracks the activities of the young Chinese middle class, a large percentage of whom create as well as consuming content via Gypsii. 90% of users don’t have full Internet access – only WAP. The Chinese take photos of food a lot and have an insatiable interest in the outside world. Adding a place in Amsterdam can generate reams of comments in Chinese. A few local content specialities are staged kidnappings at weddings, photos of work desks (important in a culture where people have little private space) and car stunts.

GyPSii faces plenty of competition in the location-based service space but its trump cards are PlaceRank and a canny business strategy. As with our supermodel, you can always add gloss but you can’t fake bone structure.

While Qype is multilingual, it treats each localized version as its own site. You’ll never run across a review in French if you’ve specified your preferred language as English. Qype users in Italy will not only find loads of already written reviews in their own language, they can also use the popular Qype radar for mobiles. That’s a nifty freeware application for iPhone and Android devices which shows nearby businesses and uses GPS. In the UK Qype competes with TrustedPlaces, Spoonfed and a handful of other players.

The move makes sense. Italy is Qype’s 10th market. The first countries of launch, Germany, UK and France, remain it’s core markets and are largely responsible for more than 350,000 Qype reviewers and more than a million reviews. Founded in 2005, Qype claims to be Europe’s largest review portal with more than 14 million users. It also operates in Spain, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Brazil.

Founder Stephan Uhrenbacher, who remains Qype’s largest private shareholder, has recently moved to a back seat on the board after deciding to bring in Stephen Taylor, a former Yahoo! Europe head honcho, as CEO. Uhrenbacher is now hunting for aspiring founders to launch new business ideas out of his Upspring vehicle.

A huge thanks to our sponsors for supporting this inaugural event: Thanks to the UKTI for sponsoring the pitches; Viadeo for sponsoring the Best Design category; Bootlaw for sponsoring Best Bootstrapped Startup; Quick.tv for sponsoring Best European Investor; Zendesk for sponsoring Best New Startup; Moonfruit for sponsoring Best Social Innovation; Latitude and Parklane Champagne for the Awards Prizes; oneDrum for sponsoring the drinks party and Mixcloud for sponsoring the DJ.

Here are the winners and finalists in each category (see the category links for more information on each company):

The Europas Shortlist: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

Winner: Spotify

Highly Commended: Amiando

Finalists:
Babbel
Dopplr
Jimdo

The Europas Shortlist: Best Design

Winner: Songkick

Highly Commended: Babbel

Finalists:
IRL Connect
Spotify
Wonga

The Europas Shortlist: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

Winner: Soup.io

Highly Commended: Doodle

Finalists:
BookingBug
Mixcloud
Struq

The Europas Shortlist: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

Winner: Mendeley

Joint Highly Commended: Amazee, School of Everything

Finalists:
Aleveo
Decisions For Heroes

The Europas Shortlist: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Huddle

Highly Commended: Zendesk

Finalists:
BlueKiwi
FreeAgent Central
VideoPlaza

The Europas Shortlist: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Alertme

Highly Commended: Amee

Finalists:
Dopplr
RouteRank
SpeedSell

The Europas Shortlist: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

Winner: Poken

Highly Commended: My Name Is E

Finalists:
Fon
INQ Mobile
Modu

The Europas Shortlist: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

Winner: SoundCloud

Highly Commended: eRepublik

Finalists:
Moshi Monsters
Playfish
WeeWorld

The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Nimbuzz

Highly Commended: Goojet

Finalists:
Aka-aki
Bambuser
GetJar

The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

Winner: Spinvox

Highly Commended: Tweetdeck Mobile

Finalists:
eBuddy
Fring
MobyPicture
Shozu

The Europas Shortlist: Best Startup Founder(s)

Winners: Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon, for Spotify

Highly Commended: Alastair Mitchell, Andy McLoughlin, for Huddle.net

Finalists:
Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, jointly, Soundcloud
Felix Haas, Armin Bauer, Markus Eichinger, Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Baerhold, Marc Bernegger, for Amiando
Richard Jones, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, for Last.FM
Richard Moross, Moo

The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

Winner: TAG – The Accelerator Group

Highly Commended: Index Ventures

Finalists:
Atlas Venture
Eden Ventures
European Founders Fund

The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

Winner: Yossi Vardi, Angel

Highly Commended: Fred Destin, Atlas Venture

Finalists:
Morten Lund
Robin Klein, TAG
Saul Klein, Seedcamp/Index Ventures

The Europas Shortlist: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Winner: Spotify

Highly Commended: TweetDeck

Finalists:
SoundCloud
Stupeflix
Tweetmeme

The Europas Grand Prix

Decided by Judges vote only

Winner: Spotify

(While you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed).

To explain…

On May 15 two UK newspapers ran the story about 104 year old woman “Ivy Bean” / @ivybean104 joining Twitter. Both The Daily Telegraph and The Sun ran with the story, which was followed up and “celebrated” by The Next Web blog.

What none of these stories told you, however, was that poor old Ivy had not joined Twitter just because it was suddenly the talk of the old peoples home. No. She joined because home PC maintenance company Geek Squad signed her up, propped her up for a photo opportunity and press-released the hell out of it. And frankly I hope they paid her, or at least donated to her favourite charity because this is one of the most self-serving, cynical PR stunts I can remember.

And to prove it, here’s the pictures all the news outlets ran (when they all have the same picture, it’s a sure sign it’s a press release). Is that a Geek Squad guy just behind her head?:

And here’s the incriminating Twitpic, clearly taken by Geek Squad of their man Martin Dix, hovering behind Ivy, having just signed her in to Twitter and presumably explained the service. (Dix also blogs for Geek Squad). It was even taken on Ivy’s own Twitpic account and frankly I seriously doubt she knew what was going on.

Note also that her first ever Tweet is clearly related to the PR shenanigans going on around her:

“I’m enjoying Twitter for the first time and having my photo taken.”

Now, she Tweeted that Tweet at “10:02 AM May 14th from web”. That’s important, because this was only one day before the story went live on the Sun, and Telegraph site at 8:20am May 15. In other words, cynical Geek Squad had already targeted Ivy as being the oldest person they could find and convince to go on Twitter. The fact it was a day before the story went live speaks volumes.

Ivy also Tweeted:

“I’m on Twitter! Come and follow my feed at IvyBean104.”

Since when did a 104 year old suddenly start using words like “feed”?

In fact, only The Sun newspaper actually indicated that this might all be PR-nonsense cooked up by Geek Squad, referring to its “Silver Surfers’ Day” campaign to “encourage more elderly people to get online”. Classic PR-guff.

However, TechCrunch’s (and here’s our apology) MG Seigler decided this whole thing was a ruse to get The Telegraph onto Digg. And admittedly, The Telegraph has been gaining a reputation for using Digg quite substantially lately. It gets a lot of traffic from social sites, and the UK press has a sneaking suspicion Tele sub editors have all taken courses in headline writing for Digg.

However, we’re happy to point out that the story wasn’t just cooked up by the Telegraph to get onto Digg – but lots of journalists and bloggers fell for Geek Squad’s PR.

Compounding the issue however is The Next Web which seems to think TechCrunch’s non-scoop was itself an attempt to get on Digg – and predictibly did a post on it in a slightly bizarre tirade. Clearly, The Next Web did not realise it was a Geek Squad press release the first time round and still hasn’t. They sign off their story with “This is clearly not a completely fabricated story.” Instead it attacks TechCrunch for not celebrating the fact a 104 year old is on Twitter, a story which “made people smile”.

Come again? Since when were independent bloggers supposed to just celebrate things – instead of getting the facts right?

My view is that WHERE stories come from is at least as important as what they are about. I hope we can all learn from this episode. In the race to feverishly post about Twitter, sometimes the facts are starting to get lost in the hype.

Oh, and to complete this ridiculous circle, feel free to Digg this post.

Update: As commenters below point out, Ivy was two years ago signed up to Facebook by her care home to be the “oldest person on Facebook”, presumably after they were incensed that a 97-year old French youngster had laid claim to the title. I look forward to the day Ivy is signed up by Digg as their “oldest user” and to her actually getting something out of being used in this way, simply because of her age.

Update II: A few people have inferred that I think @ivybean104 is actually fake – that she’s not tweeting herself. Frankly unless someone videos her doing it it’s going to be hard to absolutely verify, though her Tweetstream (e.g. “just had my tea now its a game of dominos with my friends”) looks plausible. What is slightly odd however is the fact she is following 94 people, many of whom, like @barclayjen in Columbia, SC, (Geek Squad was the first account she followed btw) she is unlikely to know personally. Unless 104 year olds are a lot more socially networked than I previously thought…

This morning Lord Carter gives his first major speech since the report was published; he’ll be joined by Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media; media expert Peter Bazalgette and the discussion is chaired by NESTA’s Jonathan Kestenbaum. None of these luminaries are on Twitter yet (to my knowledge – tell me if they are).

Here we go…

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:32 AM:  Not a good start – we’ve just been asked to turn off our phones.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:33 AM:  Kestenbaum says that Digital Britain interim report strikes a balance between the importance of users in content and network creation and the difficult economic times we find ourselves in. Has he read the report?

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:38 AM: Livestream here.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:38 AM: Carter’s up. He has a prepped speech, but will just talk off the cuff.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:39 AM: Drawing the distinction between reports to government and reports of government, saying Digital Britain is the latter, because it’s meant to be implemented in the real world for the purpose of making a real change. The goal is to get the people to debate the issues as objectively and analytically as possible. Slating the public nay-saying sentiment that prevails at the moment – I’m thinking he’s read the backlash since the report was first published.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:43 AM:  @dominiccampbell points out people can tweet their feedback on the report to @innovationedge

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:44 AM: Carter’s going through the list of key focus areas in Digital Britain, starting with infrastructure.Media misunderstands how public policy and private sector markets can work together to create the infrastructure which will drive demand for higher capacity networks.

(Above: A word cloud generated by the Twitter feed during the debate)

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:50 AM: Legal protection, online safeguards – third area of interest. Admits is the area where report’s ideas are least formed, and the area on which they could use the most help from industry/users. This aspect is forcing businesses to find new models and new chances.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:53 AM: Universal service obligation for broadband is a critical building block – sans this, we could never move to switch off analogue services, such as the broadcasting signal. Other public services must follow, but this can only happen with a base level connectivity for all, which is what they based their 2MB USO connection forecasts on. This is looking ahead to digital public service delivery in future.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 8:57 AM: Moving on to the panel discussion now. Berkett up first. Virgin’s perspective very simple; Digital Britain embraces all the questions, accepts that it’s a complicated issue. Next stage around engagement with public is critical. Important thing is to focus on what we can do now to make it happen.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:00 AM: UK plc needs to demonstrate what next generation access will look like, proving the commercial model without disrupting those who have already invested (Virgin’s spent £13bn on its networks)

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:02 AM: Content must be available for all platforms – doesn’t mean ‘give it away’ for free, though

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:03 AM: We seem to have a reluctance to accept that business models must change to manage and control content to safeguard users and providers.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:05 AM: Peter Bazalgette’s turn. The paradox: vast amount of digital activity with very little revenue.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:06 AM:  USO question – Public utility vs boosting the economy. Which is more important – that everyone has access, or that the networks are boosted in terms of speed and capacity? He thinks the latter is most important now. Has ideas for revenue creation – like product placement on TV, online’s godsend might be behavioural advertising – paying for content with our attention spans and our personal data – but we need to sort out policy around this area.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:09 AM: (OT: Peter Bazalgette’s got the funkiest socks on the panel)

Peter Bazalgette's funky socks

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:09 AM: Exploring the future for IP and content creation should not protect old industry (draws parallels to shipbuilding industry in the past). Cites the example of Tate and British Library creating their own content and distributing by podcast – that’s a classic example of public service broadcasting.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:12 AM: Public money now twice as significant when it’s spent, so it must be spent wisely. Good point from the backchannel: #digitalbritain report makes no mention of software or data – content is more than television shows and music clips #carter

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:14 AM: That’s a wrap – moving on to questions now.Kestenbaum repeats Carter’s comment on the importance of the atmosphere in which the debate is conducted before opening the floor.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:16 AM: Q1. How does government plan to deal with the challenge of anticipating the rate of change of technology? Berkett answers: It’s a phenomenon we all have to live with. Referencing Virgin’s technology, the concept of having fibre closer to fixed line connections is not new, their vision is to have gigabit connectivity in the next 10 years. Technical solutions should be driven by commercial need. Carter answers: Government is trying to do as little forecasting as possible. Citing DAB as an example of one of the few calls on technology choices that government has made. Knows there is an interesting debate ongoing across Europe on 4th gen mobile, UK government feels we should harmonise on spectrum.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:23 AM:  Q2 on digital education in schools. Carter: government isn’t organised in a converged way, agrees that government needs a radical review on digital literacy, says it’s a huge issue and that there is a marker on this subject in the Digital Britain report.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:27 AM: Response from the floor – from Nico don’t see anything in the report about the people’s involvement in Digital Britain.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:29 AM:  Charles Leadbeater asking about service delivery, creative use of new business models and the dividend around entrepreneurial activity. Bazalgette says: it’s already there. Doesn’t think it’s Carter’s job to supplant that. Social dividend is there and developing and will continue to do so. Economic dividend is not there.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:33 AM: Carter’s ready Leadbeater’s paper, thought it was great and asked very good questions. “But when you’re doing what I’m doing, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” The questions are real and profoundly important, but isn’t sure his report can answer the questions *and* achieve its goals.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:36 AM: Carter: (referencing content delivery platforms like the BBC) In a decade, these will be open source platforms because they’ll have to be.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:39 AM: Berkett: The issue of ‘protection’ needs to be cracked or else the [media] industry’s going to suffer. Bazalgette says there isn’t a single media company who knows what their model will be in 10 years’ time.

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:41 AM: Carter: Britain is naturally good at tech/media stuff – question is, how do we maximise the opportunies?

Tue 24 Feb 09 @ 9:43 AM: Kestenbaum’s final observation: the models and assumptions around the issues have totally broken down, Carter’s rebuilding and rebooting them for the Digital Britain of the future. There isn’t a single theme in public policy now that has as much enthusiasm and optimism around it.

And that’s it. If you’re interested in joining the debate, register your interest at digitalbritain@berr.gsi.gov.uk.

Fav.or.it won angel seed investment in December 2007 from UK angel David Richmond, who also joined the board. Richmond founded Striva Corporation in 1998, which was sold to Informatica Corporation in 2003 for $62m. More recently he has also been executive chairman of TouchClarity, acquired in early 2007 by Omniture and CEO of Red-M.

Here is an interview by Robert Scoble with Halstead, an indication in itself that this is a startup to watch.

Disqus is a javascript embed or blog plug-in (Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType) that enhances blog comments and integrates it with a fully moderated community forum. Then there’s Tangler, another commenting system attached to forums. And CoComment recently landed itself in London to throw a drinks party in an attempt to sell its service into bigger sites.

Meanwhile the tiny UK-based fav.or.it – yes, those guys with the impossible to type name – are still prepping their site while juggling chats with potential investors. Fav.or.it will have a multi-faceted service but more importantly it will aggregate comments and send them back through the standard technologies already available. The plug-in services, like Disqus et al, are more likely – by contrast – to fragment blog comments and leave everyone with non-standard blogs.

It’s going to be interesting to see how all this plays out. Who knew simple old blog comments would come to this?

Favorit brings together blog reading and replying into one simple web application. Its innovative web interface is designed to allow users to let users read any kind of RSS feed, cut-up, mashed-up with other feeds or “sliced” in any kind of way.

It’s also is a classic Web 2.0 startup which will attempt to solve one of the web’s most frustrating issues, i.e. the separation of reading RSS feeds from being able to comment on the post. Admittedly any blog post is only a click away from a user being able to comment on it. But imagine being to comment, Twitter-like, under a feed and not even have to care about filling in your name, email, etc. Just comment, save and carry on reading. Having witnessed it myself at an exclusive demo, I can confirm that this is what Favorit is capable of.

Favorit will this week launch a private beta based on a submitted database of 10,000 blog feeds. (The site is exhibiting in London at FOWA this week and at mashup demo.

What’s the Backstory? Favorit is owned by Assembleron Limited, a one-man startup based in in the grounds of Reading University, UK. Founder Nick Halstead (and managing director) came from the games world, having worked at BSkyB interactive games, Empire and Argonaut prior to that. But over the last two years he has immersed himself in the world of blogs and Web 2.0 trends. For the last five months Halstead, working with a couple of freelancers, has been developing the Favorit core engine.

Although Favorit is being bootstrapped right now, Halstead is in conversation with a number of potential backers. To see why, read on.

Turning feeds into slices

Favorit approaches the issue of reading RSS feeds with the concept of ’slices’. Each post in a feed is categorised and tagged. By choosing a category, tag or rank (or a combination of each) the user can filter what they are reading in a more efficient manner than the normal ‘hose’ effect of having to laboriously wade through hundreds of blog posts in hundreds of feeds. Favorit has dubbed every combination of tag, rank or category a ’slice’.

Slices can be created from tags, categories, rank (0-5 stars), a person (all that persons feeds, or their posts, or a mashup of more than one person), one or more feeds and finally date (range, single dates, /when/yesterday).

If a post does not include any meta data for tagging Favorit automatically generates tags using its own home-grown system. It will also allow the community to edit tags based upon a simple voting system that would allow tags to be added or removed. When you read a feed or a slice on Favorit it will automatically generate a tag cloud based on that content. Pick one post and it lists the tags. Pick 5 feeds to read all in one slice and it adjusts the cloud again.

So for example, if you only want to read about the iPhone in one feed, you create an iPhone slice for that feed or tag. You can also combine several feeds, so “Scoble”, “MacWorld” and “Google News”, and create an intelligent ’slice’ of all three which only picks out the word iPhone.

Now I know you are going to say you can do something vaguely similar with smart lists inside an RSS reader. But to do this requires a lot of copying and pasting of feeds and searches. On Favorit it’s just about clicking the feeds from which you want to create a slice. Anyone who uses Favorit will have an OPML file which they can also export.

Any slice can be shared and on top of that the slice can be instantly turned into a feed in its own right. Thus Favorit is going up against the business models of feed aggregators like FeedDigest.

Comment posting with an API

Currently, sites like Digg try to draw the conversation on blogs towards its own site. And they’ve done it very well. But surely blogs would be better off having those Digg comments appear on their own sites?

The problem right now is that not all the blogging platforms have open access to their commenting systems. Plus, RSS feeds for entries are generally separated from feeds for comments.

Based on PHP and the Zend Framework, Favorit will launch an API during the public beta enabling it to hook into many more blogging platforms to allow it to send comments back to the sites. Halstead hopes the API will create an ecosystem outside of Favorit.

Now of course there is a glaring issue here. Sites thrive on traffic. Take away the need for a user to go to a site and comment and you potentially rob the site of a great deal of traffic. What’s the answer?

Well, by removing barriers to commenting, Favorit potentially creates a faster turnaround of comments to blogs. Halstead, admits that aggregating comments may remove some traffic, but it could also build extra readership and feed subscription. The short answer is we won’t know until Favorit has been operating for a few weeks.

But it’s fair to say that Favorit will probably be of most benefit to ‘long tail’ bloggers currently sitting in the echo chamber.

Think about it. If your blog can be indexed and appear in a river of news alongside some of the biggest blogs, with commenting made a great deal easier, a smaller blog could easily be dragged further up the tail. On Favorit, every blog has a chance to be read by every user, and although users have the option to filter out lower ranking blogs, the system could encourage users to find new blogs outside of the top 1000. Unread feeds won’t be moved into the main database until people start adding them.

It must be noted that Favorit can only put comments on a blog with its permission. A blogger either creates an account on Favorit and supplies it with account details (via XMLRPC) or the blogger installs Favorit’s widget. The full list of supported blog platforms will appear in the next few weeks, although I can safely say that Blogger and any Wordpress.com or hosted Wordpress site will be included, though Typepad or LiveJournal just yet. They are aiming to support 80-90% of blogs out there.

Favorit will also pick up trackbacks and coments that appear on a post.

CoComment take note: Favorit also tracks any comments that you would happen to write directly onto other blogs, so long as it’s in the database.

What about comment spam?

Since the site won’t allow the posting of comments without a user being signed in, spammers will be severely restricted, unless they plan to hire hundreds of people to manually spam (which is unlikely given the economics). Favorit will also internally police the system and allow the community to report spamming from signed-up users.

But could Favorit pick up spam from external sites it trawls? Possibly, says Halstead. That is a possibility for which they will have to rely on their own anti-spam systems and the community to police.

Competitors?

It’s easier to figure put who Favorit is not competing against. In its sites are, for example, are elements of Blogger, Digg, Buzztracker, to name just three. Then there is Co.mments and Commentful.

And the recently launched Intense Debate is a souped-up blog commenting system that adds a lot of features for publishers and commenters alike, but unlike Favorit it requires a plug-in to be installed.

Affect on advertising?

This a glaring issue with Favorit. If everyone who currently reads commercial blogs (like TechCrunch) switches from the original web ages to the feeds forever, no-one would see the advertising. The answer of course is that advertising, to be effective, would need to switch to RSS feeds. This is possible since Favorit does not touch the content of the feed. But it is also controversial. Many publishers still only provide partial feeds, and many blogs hate putting ads in their feeds.

It’s a tricky topic. “I suspect partial feeds just won’t be read as much,” says Halstead. And therein lies the rub.

Tracking attention beats voting

Because Favorit uses Javascript it will gauge how long you read a post and what you did before during and after. This data is invaluable both for advertising targeting and for data mining, and its far more sutble than Digg’s voing system. Eventually the site hopes to rank as many as a million blogs in order of attention.

Because it will track what people actually read, Favorit will be a far more accurate reflection of what is popular online than Digg, which everyone knows is increasingly subject to gaming.

Although Halstead went to great lengths with me to emphasise that Favorit is a different animal than Digg, there is no getting away from the comparison. And it’s quite clear that capturing attention meta-data beats ‘voting’ hands down.

He does admit, however, that “We’ll have so much data it’s about working out what to do. We’ll be in the same category as as Facebook in terms of amount of data.”

A blogging platform as well?!

Favorit is not just going to be a feed reader. It is also a blogging platform. By creating a subdomain, such as ‘gadgets.fav.or.it’ users will be able to write their own posts into the system. Using this, they can pull in their feed from their blog as well as post directly into Favorit. Any comments on the Favorit subdomain blog then appear back at the original blog.

Since it’s all widget based, users will be able to ‘pimp’ their Favorit blogs with a set of widgets – many form outside suppliers – which Favorit will build into the system. But you won’t be able to access the underlying HTML or CSS.

Here’s where the revenue comes in. Favorit plans to share advertising revenues with users who create these subdomain blogs.

Of course, it goes without saying that allowing users to create subdomains could open a can of worms. Favorit plans to police the creation of the sites. and will limit the number of sub-domain names one profile user can register. So to create a lot you’d have to create more than one profile by hand. But we’ll see how they manage that in due course. It could get interesting.

The ‘Long Tail of Techmemes’

And of course, this is worth money. If the Nike subdomain pulls in everything there is to know about Nike, Google could be among those knocking on the door.

And consider this. Favorit could also enable a ‘long-tail of Techmemes’. In theory anyone could create a sub-domain site which, say, tracks blog posts about football, or golf, or race horse breeding. You name it.

The future

Halstead is aiming to get 50,000 users inside the next 3 months. “We’re not aiming for Twitter growth” he tells me.

But with its geek-friendly layout and jargon, Favorit is not going to be viewed as a mass-mark consumer-friendly site any time, soon. But given that it will be indexing tens of thousands of blogs, being able to slice and dice what you read but rarely seeing the letters XML or RSS, it does have the potential to open up feed-reading to a wider audience than perhaps other aggregators have done so far.

At the end of the day, by uniting feeds with comments Favorit has an opportunity to put itself at the centre of the blogosphere. And that’s a good place to be. To re-work a well-worn phrase, if markets are conversations, then Favorit is money.

[Digg this story - ironically]