Google Alerts can’t distinguish people with common names, according to Angstro CEO Salim Ismael. His company, which presented at Techcrunch 50 Monday, uses an algorithmic solution to find news mentions of a user’s specific contacts and aggregate them into a personalized newspaper.
"When we do a news crawl, we find the right people and disambiguate; we
also then are able to figure out what are the top stories out of the
maybe hundreds out there," he says.
To save users the trouble of inputting their entire contact list, Angstro can use existing lists on social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Rafe Needleman at CNET writes: "Now that is a killer pitch; who wouldn’t want to read what business associates and competitors are up to?" We agree; the product seems like it will appeal to professionals in almost any industry.
The company is currently in invitation-only beta and will launch fully later this year.
—Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
