Startup Opens Conversations In Social Networks

Solarist

Solariat co-founders Jack Smith and Jeffrey Davitz plan to unveil the company Thursday, along with technology that inserts relevant information into online, social conversations in real-time. The marketing tool, AdLib, analyzes, interprets, and responds to chatter.

The platform emerges as the next generation of distributed architecture that maps back to the social conversation within a forum, Web site or blog. AdLib finds consumers searching for information by analyzing conversations in blogs and forums and pulls in additional content and links into the string from other locations on the site.

Existing technologies were not built for social media. They have no ability to find consumers looking for information inside conversations. Ad servers use generic page-level information for targeting because many were built years ago. And their biggest shortcoming -- they don't adequately address privacy issues, according to Smith, Solariat CEO.

AdLib looks for construct searches in the conversation in real-time. People build sets of keywords and the technology matches the pattern in the conversation. The technology analyzes the construct of the query and builds a search to look for the content based on the context implied in the conversation. It finds matching information somewhere else on the site, either in a conversation or content, and inserts it into the conversation string.

Davitz, Solariat CTO, implemented a similar platform that works differently for the military while at SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts contract research and development for government agencies.

Davitz says the company will consider taking portions from conversations in real-time search engines and adding those into social streams on forums, blogs and networks.

As social media use continues to grow, people turn to each other to find information online. Search is moving from the search box to conversations. In rapidly evolving social environments where these conversations are occurring, traditional methods of banner advertising and search marketing are ineffective.

Solariat raised $1 million in venture capital funding from KPG Ventures in San Francisco. Today, About.com has implemented AdLib on its site Calorie Count.

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