Friday, 25 October 2013
Firefox plugin reveals how your internet browsing is being monitored
Fab.com Updates Site To Give Better Recommendations As It Pursues Global Growth
Lifestyle focused e-commerce company Fab has unveiled a new design for its website in time for the holiday shopping season. The core of Fab.com's new user interface is its ‘Personalization' feature, which leverages collaborative filtering technology developed by Fab to make product recommendations more relevant to each shopper's interests. Fab will also update its iOS and Android apps within the next few days. The company is offering a $10 credit today at this link.
Fab.com's collaborative filtering tech, which it claims is more powerful than that of any other e-commerce site, evaluates the items each visitor has viewed, faved or shared on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, past purchases, and activity by other shoppers Fab believes have similar tastes. The site's recommendation engine takes advantage of data points accumulated from its members, which numbered 14 million in June.
Fab and other sites that use collaborative filtering (including Pinterest) constantly try to refine their algorithms so they can provide the most accurate recommendations based on the smallest amount of data. This is important to hook users as early as possible, even if they have clicked on only a few items. Fab's collaborative filtering technology uses Apache Mahout's machine learning libraries, which also includes support for user and item based recommendations.
The company says its next step is working on singular value decomposition, or the factorization of a real or complex matrix in linear algebra. This helps Fab because collaborative filtering may become slower as the amount of data it has to evaluate increases. Singular value decomposition, on the other hand, offers more scalability and potentially make more accurate predictions using data sets with less dimensionality.
Fab's redesign (which also includes a new user interface that follows the recent trend for flat design among tech companies and larger product photos) comes as the company focuses on expansion in Asia, part of its goal to join a roster of e-commerce companies that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and Rakuten.
But Fab's growth strategy has not come without its share of headaches. Earlier this year, Fab made the latest in a series of pivots by moving its business model away from flash sales to focus on its “lifestyle shop,” including home goods, which account for 50 percent of sales. The company said it abandoned its flash sales model because it is difficult to scale globally if Fab wants to be able to sell the same products around the world.
Then July, it was sued for trademark infringement and unfair competition by shoes and apparel site Just Fab. Around the same time, Fab.com laid off about 150 employees from its Berlin offices in what it said was an effort to reduce redundancies.
The lay-offs came just one month after Fab announced the close of $150 million in Series D funding, with plans to raise another $100 million. Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. The funds will be used to invest in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology and merchandising.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/wkwcjCrE9C0/
Mobile Payments Startup Flint Raises $6M Series B Led By Digicel Group
Mobile payments startup Flint has been keeping a low profile for much of this year, but it's looking like that quiet period is finally over. The company just recently launched support for Android in a bid to widen its reach, and today the startup has confirmed that it's raised a $6 million Series B round led by Digicel Group with SVG Partners, Storm Ventures, and True Ventures also participating.
Wait, Digicel Group? Who? They're not exactly a known quantity around these parts, but their oeuvre may just offer a glimpse at where the mobile payments startup goes next - it's best known as a wireless service provider with networks peppering the Caribbean and the South Pacific.
“They're kind of renegades in the mobile operator space,” CEO Jason Goldfarb told me. “Which is fine by us, we're kinda the new kid on the block too.”
He isn't kidding. If you haven't been keeping tabs on the Flint odyssey, the startup launched in May 2012 to bring yet another perspective to the booming mobile payments space. In a nutshell, Flint wants to get a new generation of entrepreneurs and business owners processing payments on the fly without having to be tethered to a traditional countertop POS system.And I know what you're thinking: I've heard that before too.
Where Flint aims to set itself apart is no-nonsense approach to getting mobile entrepreneurs up and running. There's no additional hardware needed to get started for one - after a brief setup process merchants can simply scan their customers' credit cards using the Flint app and the iDevice's camera. That data is then encrypted and passed along to the backend payment processor (nothing remains on that device), and a quick signature with a finger seals the deal.
Flint also offers more competitive transaction fees than players like Square, especially when debit cards come into play - debit card swipes essentially cost 1.95% plus $0.20 while those with credit cards pay 2.95% plus an additional $0.20.
Now that the team is suddenly flush with some extra capital, what's next? Goldfarb is definitely content to keep the Flint roadmap closely guarded, though he did note that he planned to flesh out the 16-person team considerably and that Flint is working on backend tools focused on driving repeat business and referrals for small business owners. He wouldn't confirm how many users now tap into the service these days, though he did note that the company has seen “strong engagement” off the 150,000 iOS app installs since launch May 2012 and a 10x surge in transaction volume.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/oTfKI1pLQT8/
Microsoft puts the focus back on gaming with Xbox One 'Invitation' ad
Apples to BlackBerrys: John Sculley reportedly considering bid for failing phone maker
