TMCnews Featured Article

“Chat has changed.” That’s the tag (News - Alert) line of Irish company Blooie, which offers what it calls an “intelligent conversation platform.”

So how has chat changed? With the help of analytics, says Blooie. The company’s solution enables any websites to host real-time conversations by pairing users together: not randomly or through similar details in their social graphs, but through similar interests in specific online content, websites and topics. Blooie can then recommend related content from the website or elsewhere online, and analyze conversations to ensure more relevant user matches in future chats.

Internet users and consumers like chat. In fact, live Web chat is replacing many other traditional contact channels. Consumers find chat fast, immediate, easy to use and time-saving. Chat also works well for companies: they can control the message better, and agents can carry on several chats simultaneously (something that can’t be done with telephone calls).

For website owners, Blooie is developing a full analytics suite that provides detailed insight, including analysis of the engagement of users and relevance of content; insight into secondary topics prompted by the primary content, allowing publishers to determine a base of user interests and adapt their content accordingly; comparative benchmarking across industry sectors to determine popular keywords and current topics of conversation.

Blooie says its technology is really about where chat and social media meet.

“Ninety percent of website users never engage beyond reading an article or watching a video,” said company co-founder Mark Ryan. “Instead, they head off to social networks, often to share content rather than discuss it. The likes of Twitter (News - Alert) are building their businesses on the content of others and that’s a genuine problem for site owners, one we believe Blooie can help solve.”

“People enjoy making acquaintances with strangers online; it’s why chat rooms and latterly social media have found a userbase. It’s fair to say some are wary of real-time chat because of the legacy of ChatRoulette; the uncertainty of not knowing what will occur next. We’ve cracked that problem; ‘random’ chat is dead. Now there’s the potential to talk to people you’ll always find engaging,” said Ryan.

Blooie, which supports over 200 online publishers to date, has raised €100,000 ($130,000) in seed funding from Northstar Ventures and IP Group, and was part of the ignite100 startup accelerator program, Betakit is reporting. The service is free to use for both content providers and visitors. To generate revenue, Blooie charges content providers that want analytics around the conversations and levels of engagement.

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