Find, Feature and Promote
Liveflows is a free service you install on your page or sidebar with simple < javascript > code.
- Find - Liveflows anonomously processes real user activity and attention data to find your best posts.
- Feature - Genetic algorithms are used to feature this content on your site and on sites across your network. Links appear as a text block in a sidebar, incorporated into your page or in a special footer.
- Promote - Your best content is automatically promoted across the network of blogs that follow you so it can be seen by more people.
Connect with other bloggers and get your posts in more places
In a very simple Twitter-like fashion, Liveflows helps you connect your blog to other blogs and automatically share your best content. Your site gains links to the freshest, best posts from blogs you follow, and your great posts will be promoted on blogs that follow you. It's a bit like blogs becoming friends with each other!
All under your control
Make your network as large or as focused as you like. Like Twitter, you control whom you follow so you'll never have unwanted blogs in your network. Quality is rewarded.
Advanced matching technologies
According to a 2008 Indiana University survey which measured 100,000 users and captured 13B requests (pdf) :
- 5% of web traffic is search and search related
- 55% is from people typing in addresses (i.e facebook.com, nytimes.com, mail.yahoo.com, people.com) or using bookmarks/email/IM to get to sites
- 40% of web traffic is from users clicking on links
We're trying to help with that 40%. On every page where you install Liveflows, we show users the best links to enjoy--from your site and around your network.
Liveflows matching technology helps readers quickly connect with your blog through your best content. We are exploring link importance based on user activity and attention. Our personalization algorithms are evolving and improving all the time, mapping what readers have viewed, where they came from, what they are searching for, etc. against the behavior of others to bring readers the best content from your blog and the network. Our new distributed database takes care of all the heavy lifting, but we need YOUR help to install and beta test.
Can you be more concrete? How would it look?
You're familiar with the popular articles plugins? Good. Liveflows expands that idea with algorithms that personalize the result set to the user and the page and promote the content across your network.
We are actively testing multiple display formats (all styled to match your site's look and feel) to determine which one best promotes your content. For example, our new footer bar is a fast, lightweight solution that will work seamlessly on nearly every site. A small 30px tall footer appears at the bottom of the page and when a user hovers with their mouse, it expands to provide instant access to your best content and the best links from blogs you follow. You have FULL CSS control, so color/font, etc. are fully customizable to look like your site and there is no liveflows branding.
In every case, the look is all about you and your site, not us. We want to be the behind-the-scenes tool that helps find, feature and promote the best content on your site and across your network.
Simply sign up above and we'll send you details of the look and placement we'd recommend for your site.
How do I get Liveflows?
Sign up! We're in active beta and we would love for you to join us.
Active beta means you install the javascript on your site and we actively test and refine the algorithms and features of the product to make it even better for you, your readers and your network of connected bloggers.
Please make sure to follow us on twitter and read our blog. For more background information, continue reading our about us.
About Liveflows
Always forward, no dead ends, never backward.
live: actually being performed at time of viewing; alive; possessing life; abounding with life and energy
flows: to move or progress freely; continuous progression; to proceed smoothly and readily; to have a smooth continuity
The background
In 2000 we founded Redline Networks, a company in the load balancing / networking / web acceleration space.
We developed the first product line that implemented the HTTP protocol more or less at switch speeds and were awarded a bunch of patents for novel web and internet networking technologies.
The new idea
After Juniper Networks bought the company in 2005, we turned our attention to the slow database layer. What would a really big database look like? Could you scale a db to web-size? If so, what could you do with it? Personalization was always interesting, but what would web-scale personalization look like at the app level?
We read an NYT/ IHT article which talked about online news headlines, and how much editorial oversight was required to keep big stories around long enough to catch the infrequent users, but not so long that the site became boring to the super fans.
"Excuse me, but why can't everyone just get the news they haven't read yet? You know, the NEW stuff? It was obvious this problem was begging for personalization, but it wasn't obvious how to tackle it.
GFS and Cassandra, Hadoop and Hbase are probably excellent at what they do. But ours is a completely independent approach that targets different workload. We've traded batch processing strength for greater flexibility, event-driven processing and real-time results. But since our approach is new, we're sure to experience some hiccups. Please bear with us when that happens.
What is Liveflows about?
The goal of Liveflows is to add value directly to websites, by providing a richer, easier experience for readers through the use of advanced technologies not commonly found in publishing platforms. Users and publishers alike want more views, more consumption, and more fun.
We have a long way to go, and a lot of ideas to explore. But it's an exciting start, and with help from YOU, our beta testing users and beta testing publishers, we can continue to mature and enhance the product. So thank you.
Our small team is as distributed as our database model, but we'd love to hear
from you if you have any feedback, questions or ideas:
hello@liveflows.com