The New Thoof – Smartest Site On The Web
Most people surf the Web unaware that an army of Artificial Intelligence engines are watching your every move in an effort to match interests with commercial messaging. Well, the bad news is… they are. The good news is that a brand new Web site called Thoof is going to use an even better version of this technology to entertain you instead!
Thoof’s founder and CEO, Ian Clarke, arrived at the conclusion that news aggregation sites such as Digg, Google News, Reddit and others provided volumes of articles, but left it to the readers to search endlessly for ones that appeal specifically to you. Being the uber-genius he is, he decided that someone needed to apply some Artificial Intelligence to the process and allow the system to learn and predict user preferences in order to present only articles with the highest probability of appealing to each individual.
Sounds simple, right? Well, it’s not. Ian and I have had multiple conversations which usually start out with him explaining statistical probability, quantum physics, photo-mechanics, supernatural phenomenon… oh, and I think I caught a niner in there. Anyway, they usually end with me asking for it in layman’s terms, at which point he explains it like this:
- Thoof requires initial user registration. This is so that the system can track individual usage, a necessity when it comes to learning what you like.
- As you peruse the home page, Thoof presents you with a number of articles to choose from. You of course make a choice and the system opens the link in a new window for you to read.
- These articles are listed in Thoof by users who found something interesting and simply want to share it.
- As you read different articles Thoof begins to learn what you like and the listings become more and more relevant until one day there should be a page full of things that you want to read – thus completing your addiction to the site!
- Because of this customization no two people will ever see the same thing when they log in to Thoof!
- After you read the article, you have the opportunity to actually modify the description if it wasn’t accurate.
- If you do modify the description other users will “vote” on your suggested change and after it has enough concurrence the change will go into effect.
I recommend that everyone go check out Thoof and see what you think about it.
One email per post. Twenty years of this, still going. Unsubscribe whenever.
Hi John,
Don’t know when you’ll get a chance to read this, thought you might know the answer
Has Thoof Gone away?
Seems to be it is redirecting to reddit today, and I haven’t any notice of what happened.
I heard about it last week!! something smart and cool!!!
Been looking at Thoof every now and then since launch, and’ve been enjoying that it serves me news that aren’t necessarily mainstream (on Digg, for example). I guess that’s an indication that the system works well.
What’s been throwing me off is the lacking user interface. There is no indication of how many news there are on the site, what made the system serve me these news instead of others, and last but least, there is no easily accessible help documentation available. I’ve been scratching my head over why some articles (and often my own) have the “Not interesting” button while others don’t.
But the site is new of course, so we’re sure to see some improvements in the near future. An interesting site that I intend to keep my eye on.