We were recently invited to present at IBD Network’s recent Under the Radar event on Consumer Techonologies and Why Web 2.0 Matters. There were 32 companies in attendance, each giving short presentations. Our session was on Search 2.0. Besides Loomia, it included Riya, Kaboodle, and Sphere — all cool companies each in their own right. Sean Wise from Wise Mentor Capital was the (well-informed and highly engaging) moderator. The panelists were Kevin “Seven Deadly Sins�? Efrusy from Accel Partners, Stowe Boyd from A Working Model, and David Tannenhouse from A9.com. Each had good things to say about all the companies.

In Loomia’s presentation, David talked about discovery and how it differs from search. How discovery is about finding things you may not know about but that are personally relevant to you. One of the answers is recommedations and similar items which he showed by giving a demo of the Recommendations service. Based on the feedback from the panelists, audience, and blogosphere, he did a pretty good job.

Here are a few of the comments:

Stewe Boyd in /Message

The event was all about consumer software, and I was acting as a judge for Search 2.0 and Community 2.0. Some of the companies were pretty far along, like Dogster and Tagged. I guess the products that most interested me were Loomia, Sphere, and Riya. I also sat in other sessions, as a pedestrian, and I was especially intrigued with Goowy and Tailrank. I plan to do a series of posts over the next week on those companies that caught my eye.

Reg Cheramy in Web 2.0 Central

Loomia offers a very nice recommendation service. By simply inserting a bit of HTML code into your site, you can have Loomia show your visitors personal recommendations of which of your content they will be interested in.

Michele’s Miscellaney

Looks like a neat service for web sites that have shopping, etc. and want to include comparisons and recommendations. Customizable, easy to get going if you are reasonably competent with HTML.

Much praise goes to Debra Landa and Alison Murdock at IBD Network for putting on a fantastic event.

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