Collecta Blog – Real-time Streaming Search

Tofu showing off the Collecta Compound Eye at Pecha Kucha in Charleston, SC.

Today, less than a year after the initial Beta launch of Collecta.com, we are happy to announce that Collecta has secured $4.7M million in additional funding from new investor Dace Ventures, joining with existing investors True Ventures and other individuals.

Collecta will use the capital to accelerate its lead in delivering the real time web, with particular focus on building out the Collecta team, expanding content distribution partnerships with publishers looking to increase their reach, and enriching the level of engagement and time spent on their sites through real-time content.

“Streaming real-time search is a tremendous market opportunity, and we are impressed with Collecta’s management team, its technology, and its established partnerships with content providers and publishers,” said Dave Andonian, Managing Partner at Dace Ventures. “With its distribution strategy, Collecta has a unique opportunity to bring real-time content to the masses who are now actively consuming the majority of their information needs on the Web.  We are excited to lead this current round of funding and help Collecta expand its reach with publishers, content providers and advertisers.”

We are also happy to announce that Collecta will be moving its company headquarters to Los Angeles, CA in order to better take advantage of the vibrant media presence in the area — further emphasizing Collecta’s focus on strategic and business partnerships with publishers and online content providers.

About Dace Ventures

Based in Waltham, Mass. Dace Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $70 million in funds under management. Dace is actively investing in entrepreneurs building the Next Wave of internet-related innovations in digital media, consumer marketing and mobile services. First and foremost, the fund invests in entrepreneurs who are building great teams. Dace looks for companies with compelling innovation, first mover advantage in high-potential markets and an opportunity for the partnership to provide value at key inflection points of growth. Current investments in addition to Collecta include CityVoter, EveryScape, Exit41, Howcast, LocaModa, Mall Networks, Panraven, Rapleaf, UpCompany (Tracked.com) and Vitrue. For more information, go to www.daceventures.com.

About True Ventures

Based in the Silicon Valley, with offices in Palo Alto, CA, San Francisco, CA, and Great Falls, VA, True Ventures invests in promising entrepreneurs at the earliest stages in the highest-growth segments of the technology market. The partners at True Ventures have started over ten companies as founders, and the venture firm is designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The firm clearly understands both opportunities and challenges in the earliest stage of development and provides young companies with a powerful, seasoned partner. True Ventures has raised two venture capital funds to date and manages $375 million in limited partner capital. For more information, please visit www.trueventures.com.

Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, has published a research paper on real time search behavior based on data from Collecta Real Time Search.  In one of the earliest studies on user behavior among real-time search users, Jansen draws some interesting conclusions about the differences between regular web search vs. real-time search users.  At Collecta, we are looking forward to more studies of this kind, which will continue to prove that real-time search is a different beast than traditional search, and still has plenty of room to grow and thrive. Read all of Researchers examine real-time search behavior here.

The Collecta Widget has taken off and is being used all over the web. Its flexibility in defining your own search terms and customization options including custom CSS make its uses almost limitless.  So to help keep the ideas flowing and show you some of the ways the Collecta widget has already been used, we put together a gallery of all types of widgets.  You can grab these and use them as they are, edit the search terms or just use them as inspiration to build your own.

Widget.Collecta.Com/Gallery

Need some help with the CSS part?  Check out this help file for more details.

In an effort to give Twitter application developers an edge, Collecta has released a new API program. Collecta is now granting access to its network of over 15 million real-time sources at no cost.

“Developers have built some amazing applications using data from Twitter’s network,” says Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell. “Collecta’s API allows developers to extend their tools far beyond Twitter, to the rest of the real-time web.”

Collecta’s Twitter compatible API delivers up to the moment results from the Web, in a format that is simple to integrate into any desktop app, mobile app or web app. This means third-party developers can now integrate fresh streaming results from Collecta’s broad base of social media, established news, and unique content sources directly into their applications.

Collecta has already been tapped by sites like by CNET, StarTribune, MySpace and thousands of others to deliver streaming real-time content. Application developers can draw upon the same network to provide their own users with similar, more comprehensive real-time data.

“We want to support the explosion of creativity in the real-time space,” says Campbell. “we love seeing new, clever ways to take advantage of Collecta’s real-time data. We’ve done a lot of the hard work to create the real-time stream so that app companies can focus on their specific ideas”

Application developers, let Collecta help you build a more interesting site either by using our API or Easy Widget Builder.

To learn more, go to http://developer.collecta.com.

For SXSW 2010 we partnered with Sched.org to provide streaming information about every event they have listed in their schedule.  At last count that was 7,091 events.  To get the information click an event in the schedule and select view full details, on the event page you will see a real-time stream of information about that event powered by Collecta.

Just a quick note to let you all know about the panels that Collecta will be participating in at SXSW this year.

Sat 3.13.10 @ 11 AM – Jack Moffitt is on the panel “Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized” -
Official Hash Tags:: #SXSW #realtimeweb
Follow it on Collecta: http://collecta.com/s/sxsw+realtimeweb

Monday 3.15.10 @10 – Don’t miss out on the the second annual Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator. Collecta is a finalist this year so come cheer us on!  The event kicks off on Monday and continues through Tuesday for the finals.  Full schedule available here.
Official Hash Tags: #SXSW #accelerator
Follow it on Collecta: http://collecta.com/s/SXSW+accelerator

Wed 3.17.10 @ 2PM – Brian Zisk is on “Social Networks and the Future for Musicians“.
Official Hash Tags: #SXSW #socialnetworksmusicians
Follow it on Collecta: http://collecta.com/s/SXSW+socialnetworksmusicians

If you are not already, follow us on Twitter for more announcements about whats going on and how to get the most out of SXSW.

Collecta Mobile has been live only a couple of days and it has already proven to be quite valuable to a couple of people. Yesterday JetBlue gave away round trip tickets to people following a special hash tag, if they could find them in NY they would get a tickets.

Its too late for you to win JetBlue tickets, but with SXSW just starting up on Friday, Collecta Mobile could prove just as valuable to you. Maybe you cant decide what party you want to go to. You can use Collecta Mobile to find out where the hot parties are, or find out which ones are over crowded. Or maybe you just want to know where all the free beer or cocktails are, we can help with that too.

We are excited to announce Collecta Mobile is available now for the iPhone, Droid, Palm and Nokia Maemo. Simply point your mobile browser to http://m.collecta.com and you have the power of Collecta right in your hand.

With Collecta Mobile, users can begin their streaming search for any topic of interest — from SXSW and the Oscars to the elections in Iraq and MLB spring training. Collecta pushes a live stream of pictures, news articles, status updates and more right to the mobile device. As a result, people now have the power to watch events unfold in real time no matter where they are.

Launched just in time for South by Southwest, Collecta Mobile offers a real-time window into all things SXSW. Users can stay on top of whatever is said or heard across the web, whether it’s about the festival in general or any given topic, person, panel, band, movie, or party of interest. The mobile app is ideal for festival attendees walking to the next event or waiting for a panel to start, as well as for those who can’t make it to Austin but still want to stay connected.

“The web is alive. At any given moment, new content is published, news is broken, opinions are shared, and thoughts are posted,” said Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell. “Collecta Mobile delivers all the streaming real-time goodness of the Collecta.com site, but packed onto a mobile site that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.”