Since Twitter shut down its direct-connect to LinkedIn, tech pundits have been buzzing about whether Twitter has become too “closed.” In his editorial, “Twitter faces the same dilemma as the New York Times,” Mathew Ingram argues that Twitter has chosen “advertising over being a platform”—that is, Twitter has jettisoned a truly open API, upon which developers could freely experiment, and focused on content curation and advertising revenue. Yet, it seems likely that Twitter will still offer some form of API, with a large caveat: a licensing fee or intrusive advertising. So Ingram asks, “is it possible for a media entity to simultaneously be an open platform and a destination?” I don’t really see Twitter’s two core functions—API and content host—as mutually exclusive. In fact, Twitter has an opportunity to develop a strategy for negotiating those potentially conflicting goals. As long as Twitter avoids spiraling towards more conventional content generation platforms and keeps users engaged in content curation activities, there’s no reason to believe it will not be able to monetize both its API and its user-facing content stream.

• Tags
• Twitter
• social media
• api
• content
• curation
• LinkedIn
• open
• network
• data

On Tuesday, Nara, a recommendations engine, announced a $4 million funding round, TechCrunch reports. Nara claims to be developing “a next-generation personal internet platform”…starting with restaurant recommendations; however, Nara’s approach to restaurant recommendations—and eventually, web curation—is not based on social media. Rather, the “Nara Neural Network,” or Nara’s proprietary algorithm, uses starts with three restaurants that a user likes, predicts future preferences, and incorporates user votes on other restaurants across the site. Clearly, a group of angel investors believes in the ability of the Nara team to develop a new way of pushing recommendations at users. I decided to test it out.

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• Tags
• startups
• Nara
• Boston
• New York City
• funding
• angel investors
• technology
• digital
• Internet
• innovation
• food
• restaurants
• recommendations
• curation